Unlike those who have to drive to work in the dark and come home in the dark, I love this time of year. I just snuggle into it and live every minute of it with freedom and joy.
All the way around the year, I wake up pretty early and I lie in my bed and try to remember what I am supposed to be doing. Yesterday the top priority that propelled me downstairs was clearing the horizontal surfaces. It is a losing battle for me, trying to keep the various areas of the house distinct in their purposes. Other people like to have all the tools for their projects at their fingertips. (To be fair, Jon had just completed the long-awaited task of rearranging every picture on the living room walls to make space for the painting that we brought back from Lexington. He needed those tools.)
For an hour I energetically put things back where they belong. Hammer, drill bits, tape measure: three steps from the counter to a drawer, conveniently still in the kitchen. Various containers of ingredients from recent meals: pantry closet. Collection of empty canning jars: ten steps to the shelf next to the basement stairs. Piles of drying herbs: into a bag for future processing. Leather working tools: into a pile on a side table as those were an ongoing project.
When Benjamin and Jon got up, I lost interest in that morning activity and got in the hot tub. Ahhh.
Jon made a farewell breakfast for Benjamin and Anna and Gordon came to join us. There is nothing that signals vacation time like having breakfast at the table with guests. Jon makes delicious waffles, and waffles help to soften the blow of a batch of grape jelly that never jelled. Concord grape syrup is a rare delicacy. Anna brought mangoes, another delicacy from who knows where at this time of year.
Then Benjamin got to work on packing up to go. He travels with very few clothes, but he had quite a collection of materials that he needed to take on the bus. The most challenging object was a piece of wood that was about 3 feet by 2 feet. Anna looked at his pile of metal and wood and said she would make him a bag. She was back in about ten minutes with a snazzy looking portfolio bag with a sturdy red handle that could go over the shoulder. The cloth was leftover from some curtains that she had made for her office a while ago. Anna is a very fast bag-maker, and her machine is always ready. Benjamin was delighted and proceeded to fill the bag with all sorts of important objects for his project in New York. He noted that it would have taken him a long time to collect up these things at Home Depot -- it is so nice to have a farm with an inventory of miscellaneous materials.
While Jon dropped Benjamin off at the bus stop, I practiced piano. Of course I can practice when other people are in the house, but I most like practicing when the house is all mine. I can make the same mistakes over and over without feeling like I am imposing on shared air space.
Then we finally got down to the part of the day that we had planned. We knew that we had to go to Loudoun for a few hours to open up the tunnels and give the plants some fresh air, and it is always good for both of us to remind ourselves of the lists that are waiting to be tackled out there. We took the leisurely route and stopped in at Larry Krop's to see how many trees had had left. He was there, puttering around outside so we stayed for a visit. He had more than a hundred trees leftover and he was not happy about it -- his trees were disappointing. The whole business is a crap shoot.
We spent a chilly couple of hours in Loudoun. I opened all the doors, admired all the plants, and hoed some teeny tiny spinach Jon worked on setting up some irrigation for winter watering. I lost interest in the work when I started to get cold.
On the way home we stopped at an excellent Vietnamese restaurant in Leesburg and had an early dinner. There is nothing like a giant bowl of pho to warm you up from the inside out.
But we were still a little chilled when we got home so we got back into our delicious hot tub and poached ourselves all the way through. It is absolutely the most luxurious thing in the world to have a tub of steaming hot water just waiting on the back porch. And it weighs on my conscience if we don't use it often enough because it would be a waste of energy (Charles recently calculated that it costs us 50 cents a day to keep it hot, but it's not just the money).
Then, to finish off our day, we retired to the couches, with a fire in the wood stove. I read the rest of the new Barbara Kingsolver novel (she is still really preachy but her stories and her characters are so good), in between brief naps. Jon was entertained by all kinds of something or other on his phone, between naps. As the very last treat of the day, we had blueberry/banana milkshakes. I could drink those twice a day and never get tired of it.
And that was how we spent Christmas Day. I told Jon we should do this every year, and he said we might not be able to plan on having Benjamin here, but maybe another one of our kids might be home, you never know. It would be enough for me to just hang out with Jon all day long, with nothing to do but revel in the freedom of winter. There is no reason to rage at the darkness -- that is precisely what makes a day like this possible. Shechechyanu.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Light One Candle
It's December 18, almost the darkest day of the year, and the date that Lilah died. We just lit our first yahrzeit candle in her memory (other than the gigantic one that the funeral home gave us for the week after her death) and I am glad to realize that her candle will always light up one of the longest nights.
Lilah was the inspiration for this blog -- she was the most loyal reader, always appreciative, and she told me she often read these posts several times. This made me feel like I should write more often, of course. It's not the same now that she is gone but I think of her whenever I write these postcards.
Dear Lilah,
I don't remember the first time I met you (I was 21, you were 54. Wow.) but I am sure we were both on our best behavior. I am pretty sure you and I were both on our best behavior whenever we were together for the next 37 years. You were always kind, curious, warm, and uncritical with me. I understand that I got to have a special place in your heart -- I was Jon's wife and that was just about the only qualification I really needed. I never got the sense that you wished he had chosen someone else. You welcomed me completely.
I do remember a time quite early in our relationship when I did something that shocked Jon and no doubt surprised you and Leon. I rode my bike from Cambridge to Lexington, on a whim, just going a little further and a little further until I found myself at your house. It was a Sunday afternoon. I knocked on your door. You peeked out through the curtain at the side of the door and saw a sweaty, smiling girl. When I told Jon about it later, he could not believe that I had done that. He told me no one ever dropped in on you. Oh well. We all survived. Even though neither of you had your day clothes on yet, you invited me in, gave me a drink of water, and we chatted. You gave me a little sprig of basil wrapped in a damp paper towel to take home on my bike. At that time, none of us could have known that we would be in the same family for all eternity.
We were guests in your house several times a year between about 1983 and 2009. That's a lot of visits. Most of the time I spent with you was at Concord Ave, although there were occasions when the whole family was together for celebrations and reunions outside of the house, and sometimes you two came to the farm. When I think of you and Leon, though, it is in the kitchen and the playroom and the dining room. You had a later schedule than Leon (and I) so you and Jon would stay up into the night because you were both night owls. You would putter around the kitchen, washing dishes, tidying up. It was family law that the rest of us did not wash dishes. There was a longstanding matriarchal lock on dishwashing standards. Jon told me to just stay out of it, so I did for all those years.
In the mornings, Leon was always up first. He made coffee, and he even made orange juice from oranges with his mechanical squeezer. Breakfast was always cold cereal. He would take out about eight boxes of different kinds of cold cereal (all terribly healthy) and we would mix them in our bowls. You made an elaborate mix of chopped nuts and dried fruit to put on top of the cereal. Leon took the first shift at the narrow orange table, hunched over his bowl of cereal with his glasses on top of his head, reading the Globe (this is just how Jon eats breakfast today). You would wander in about an hour later, in your robe, and he would present you with your cup of coffee. He called you Schmoo. You always called him Leon, sometimes with an exasperated tone.
Our kids took all of these routines for granted, even though they were entirely different from our home routines. They didn't feel like they had to perform, or behave in any particular way. They were comfortable and talkative and easy with the two of you. They were allowed to read at the table since everyone else was reading anyway.
We never spent the whole day at your house. After a day of visiting other people in Boston, we would come home for dinner, if that was the plan. You were the chief cook. We didn't try to cook in your kitchen. After he retired, Leon became the salad chef. You always served the meal at the right temperature, and you might even use the warming trays on the sideboard to keep it all hot. Dinner was simple, with fish or meat and vegetables. Salad was served last. Dessert was usually ice cream and dark chocolate. I don't recall that you ever baked, but I can't swear to that. Sue was the one who brought rich chocolate cake from her kitchen. After we finished dessert, you would bring out the teapot and we would sit for longer while the kids went into the playroom.
It's so funny, how I always thought of you and Leon as being elderly. You were younger than I ever realized. Toward the end, you were actually elderly. But not for most of the years before that.
I told Jon recently that I remember how touched you and Leon were when your daughter-in-law and your grandchildren officially became Jewish. I feel like that was a real turning point in our relationship, even though you were completely welcoming in every possible way before my conversion. I was so surprised when you two announced that you were coming to the service. My own family has no such sense of duty -- I never expected my parents to come to anything (because they generally didn't). But the two of you drove down to Virginia and sat in the congregation and watched me get welcomed as a Jew. It showed me that this was more important than I had understood. And I think it made me an even more committed Jew, knowing that it meant something to you.
The last time I got to talk to you by myself, a few days before you died, I had a rare opportunity to tell you what you meant to me and what a perfect mother-in-law you had been for me, for 32 years. We sat in your dark bedroom, you in your pajamas (since you were no longer getting dressed, what was the point) on your bed, me on the other bed. I told you that you had done everything just right for me. You said, "I was always hands-off" and you shrugged in your Lilah way. I repeated, that was perfect. I think it might have been a little embarrassing for you to be told so baldly how I felt about our relationship. But there was nothing to lose and I wanted you to know. We had never been close or talked about feelings much, so this was my one chance. You accepted my appreciation gracefully.
I realized many years ago that you were much stronger than we realized. You seemed delicate, and as if you didn't have too much to say about most things. I know that in other company you probably had much more to say. But around your family, all very fast talkers, you didn't try to compete or even keep up. You had questions, brief comments, but while other people spoke in paragraphs, you did a lot of smiling and listening. But it became clear that you had patience and strength that was always in there, and when Leon began to decline, your powers became evident. I admired that.
You were so much smarter than you ever let on. I don't even know what I mean by that, but you were a match for Leon, the mother of four super intellectual children, and the grandmother of another six very sharp kids. Those of us who showed up late in your life didn't get to see all that had come before us. But I know that you were extremely intelligent. Just kind of bottled up and not very showy.
I am sure you are wondering how much longer I will go on. I have only just gotten started, but I don't need to say every little thing right now. We have missed you, I think of you much more often than I ever expected, and I remember you perfectly. I remember you with much fondness and huge gratitude. And not only because you produced Jon. Because you loved me so much, and that meant a great deal to me.
Your memory will always be a blessing.
Hana
Lilah was the inspiration for this blog -- she was the most loyal reader, always appreciative, and she told me she often read these posts several times. This made me feel like I should write more often, of course. It's not the same now that she is gone but I think of her whenever I write these postcards.
Dear Lilah,
I don't remember the first time I met you (I was 21, you were 54. Wow.) but I am sure we were both on our best behavior. I am pretty sure you and I were both on our best behavior whenever we were together for the next 37 years. You were always kind, curious, warm, and uncritical with me. I understand that I got to have a special place in your heart -- I was Jon's wife and that was just about the only qualification I really needed. I never got the sense that you wished he had chosen someone else. You welcomed me completely.
I do remember a time quite early in our relationship when I did something that shocked Jon and no doubt surprised you and Leon. I rode my bike from Cambridge to Lexington, on a whim, just going a little further and a little further until I found myself at your house. It was a Sunday afternoon. I knocked on your door. You peeked out through the curtain at the side of the door and saw a sweaty, smiling girl. When I told Jon about it later, he could not believe that I had done that. He told me no one ever dropped in on you. Oh well. We all survived. Even though neither of you had your day clothes on yet, you invited me in, gave me a drink of water, and we chatted. You gave me a little sprig of basil wrapped in a damp paper towel to take home on my bike. At that time, none of us could have known that we would be in the same family for all eternity.
We were guests in your house several times a year between about 1983 and 2009. That's a lot of visits. Most of the time I spent with you was at Concord Ave, although there were occasions when the whole family was together for celebrations and reunions outside of the house, and sometimes you two came to the farm. When I think of you and Leon, though, it is in the kitchen and the playroom and the dining room. You had a later schedule than Leon (and I) so you and Jon would stay up into the night because you were both night owls. You would putter around the kitchen, washing dishes, tidying up. It was family law that the rest of us did not wash dishes. There was a longstanding matriarchal lock on dishwashing standards. Jon told me to just stay out of it, so I did for all those years.
In the mornings, Leon was always up first. He made coffee, and he even made orange juice from oranges with his mechanical squeezer. Breakfast was always cold cereal. He would take out about eight boxes of different kinds of cold cereal (all terribly healthy) and we would mix them in our bowls. You made an elaborate mix of chopped nuts and dried fruit to put on top of the cereal. Leon took the first shift at the narrow orange table, hunched over his bowl of cereal with his glasses on top of his head, reading the Globe (this is just how Jon eats breakfast today). You would wander in about an hour later, in your robe, and he would present you with your cup of coffee. He called you Schmoo. You always called him Leon, sometimes with an exasperated tone.
Our kids took all of these routines for granted, even though they were entirely different from our home routines. They didn't feel like they had to perform, or behave in any particular way. They were comfortable and talkative and easy with the two of you. They were allowed to read at the table since everyone else was reading anyway.
We never spent the whole day at your house. After a day of visiting other people in Boston, we would come home for dinner, if that was the plan. You were the chief cook. We didn't try to cook in your kitchen. After he retired, Leon became the salad chef. You always served the meal at the right temperature, and you might even use the warming trays on the sideboard to keep it all hot. Dinner was simple, with fish or meat and vegetables. Salad was served last. Dessert was usually ice cream and dark chocolate. I don't recall that you ever baked, but I can't swear to that. Sue was the one who brought rich chocolate cake from her kitchen. After we finished dessert, you would bring out the teapot and we would sit for longer while the kids went into the playroom.
It's so funny, how I always thought of you and Leon as being elderly. You were younger than I ever realized. Toward the end, you were actually elderly. But not for most of the years before that.
I told Jon recently that I remember how touched you and Leon were when your daughter-in-law and your grandchildren officially became Jewish. I feel like that was a real turning point in our relationship, even though you were completely welcoming in every possible way before my conversion. I was so surprised when you two announced that you were coming to the service. My own family has no such sense of duty -- I never expected my parents to come to anything (because they generally didn't). But the two of you drove down to Virginia and sat in the congregation and watched me get welcomed as a Jew. It showed me that this was more important than I had understood. And I think it made me an even more committed Jew, knowing that it meant something to you.
The last time I got to talk to you by myself, a few days before you died, I had a rare opportunity to tell you what you meant to me and what a perfect mother-in-law you had been for me, for 32 years. We sat in your dark bedroom, you in your pajamas (since you were no longer getting dressed, what was the point) on your bed, me on the other bed. I told you that you had done everything just right for me. You said, "I was always hands-off" and you shrugged in your Lilah way. I repeated, that was perfect. I think it might have been a little embarrassing for you to be told so baldly how I felt about our relationship. But there was nothing to lose and I wanted you to know. We had never been close or talked about feelings much, so this was my one chance. You accepted my appreciation gracefully.
I realized many years ago that you were much stronger than we realized. You seemed delicate, and as if you didn't have too much to say about most things. I know that in other company you probably had much more to say. But around your family, all very fast talkers, you didn't try to compete or even keep up. You had questions, brief comments, but while other people spoke in paragraphs, you did a lot of smiling and listening. But it became clear that you had patience and strength that was always in there, and when Leon began to decline, your powers became evident. I admired that.
You were so much smarter than you ever let on. I don't even know what I mean by that, but you were a match for Leon, the mother of four super intellectual children, and the grandmother of another six very sharp kids. Those of us who showed up late in your life didn't get to see all that had come before us. But I know that you were extremely intelligent. Just kind of bottled up and not very showy.
I am sure you are wondering how much longer I will go on. I have only just gotten started, but I don't need to say every little thing right now. We have missed you, I think of you much more often than I ever expected, and I remember you perfectly. I remember you with much fondness and huge gratitude. And not only because you produced Jon. Because you loved me so much, and that meant a great deal to me.
Your memory will always be a blessing.
Hana
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Four Seasons Means You Can't Get Off The Train
Last night at the end of a long workday, Ciara said they were feeling kind of raggedy -- the crew had worked seven days straight. That's not normal at all for the workers. They usually get to take at least one day off and usually more than that, but we have been pushing so hard to work ahead of the weather as we get ready for the next season.
We don't start early anymore because everything is often frozen. We can't work late because the sun goes down by 5:00. So this means we are cramming everything into the warmest part of the day. For Carrie and me last week, it meant that we picked and washed vegetables for six hours straight, no stopping, for two days in a row. In the summer we can easily work a ten hour day but there are breaks, there is lunch, there are other tasks to divert us. This is head-down, keep moving, fill those crates kind of work.
There aren't as many goals in the winter as there are in the summer. We are only planting and weeding inside the high tunnels, and there is no tractor work. The goals are to get the roots out of the ground before they freeze too much, to pick leafy stuff for the two markets and the die-hard Winter CSA folks, and to finish building the structures we need to get through the next season. The crew is small and experienced and motivated.
For months we have been waiting for an order of greenhouse plastic to arrive so we could put the second layer of plastic on all the tunnels before winter. Apparently our tunnels are not a normal size and also there has been a high demand for greenhouse plastic because we all had major hail storms during the summer and there was a run on plastic. The order finally came in a few days ago to our suppliers in Lancaster PA. On Monday Jon and I drove back from Boston and made it to Nolts Greenhouse Supply at exactly 5 PM, closing time. We jammed two very heavy eight foot long boxes into the mini van (which already had an awkwardly large box in it from Lilah's inventory) and now we could hope to get that project finished. We had shortened our Boston trip by one day when we looked at the weather forecast and realized that time was short.
Yesterday morning there were wind gusts up to 20 mph in Loudoun. The usual wisdom is that you put plastic on during dead calm days. The forecast said that the winds would diminish to 11 mph by early afternoon and continue to die down as the day wore on. The advice from our next door farmer neighbor was to wait until today when winds would be non-existent, but it might be snowing. Naturally, I decided to forge ahead and get it done, if possible, yesterday afternoon.
In the morning, the hard core Loudoun team spent several hours finishing pulling all the carrots. They were triumphant at lunchtime (not realizing how long the day would go). That was a huge accomplishment and the carrots are such an unexpected success since we tried so many times to get them to grow, and finally at the very last effort, they did. And they are amazingly delicious, so it all feels wonderful. The voles didn't even get to them much.
Jon and I rolled in just as the carrot harvesters were wrapping up their morning. Stephen was looking pretty triumphant himself, having worked until 11 PM the night before, with lights, to finish installing the fans at the end of the fancy new greenhouse. He was particularly pleased with one of his endwalls, which is a lyrical piece of art -- could be a sun or maybe a spider web. He is trying desperately to finish that structure before heading off to Hawaii in a day or so with his whole extended family. Motivation is strong.
As can happen when you have plastic buildings, one of our three lower tech tunnels had ripped and blown apart the night before so that was one more task to add to our ambitious list. While others went to a well-deserved lunch, Stephen and I started to deconstruct the broken caterpillar tunnel and uncover the ginger tunnel. By the time they all came back, we had prepared the damaged tunnel for a new cover. We all dragged the 150 foot long piece of plastic from the ginger tunnel and pulled it over the top of the bare ribs of the cat tunnel. Tada, almost all better. Just needed some ropes to be good as new. We set that aside for later.
The wind was not too bad. Seven of us got to work. In about five hours, we got three gigantic pieces of plastic pulled over the tops of three really tall tunnels (about 12 feet tall and 20 feet wide and about 150 feet long). Each roll of plastic weighs maybe 150 pounds, who can tell, it's really heavy when you try to move the box. We started with the hardest tunnel, not knowing whether we would be able to get everything done in one day. The technology for tacking all that plastic down is brilliant, but it uses up all your finger muscles. You have to jam this wiggle wire into a horizontal channel, securing the plastic tightly to the structure. Sometimes those channels can be well over your head, and so you are struggling to do work with your arms stretched as far up as you can. Who needs the gym.
In the middle of the afternoon, Michael arrived (generously, as he is not doing farm work now, while he works night and day to finish building his yurt) and he and Stephen put the ropes back on the cat tunnel. That one will last all winter, no question. The other one broke for reasons that we can understand and will not repeat.
As we were nearing the end, I started to complain about starvation. I asked Stephen what people do when they want to order food to be delivered. None of us had any idea, but he called Julia and Julia figured out how to order take-out Thai food. While we finished up the last edges (Samuel high on a ladder pushing the wiggle wire into channels on the top of the end ribs 12 feet up as the sun went down), Jon went to get our dinner.
I never allow conversations that devolve into comparisons of how hard each of us is working. That is not productive. But these people have been working really, really hard in the last week and more, and yesterday was a crescendo of work. I showed them on my phone a picture of the crew on December 4, 2017 after we had finished putting plastic on one of the tunnels. It is important to keep perspective. We have been here before, we will be here again.
We all went into the heated office and had a delicious dinner together. Then everyone but Stephen and Jon went home to get into their pajamas. While I watched Shaia for another few hours because Julia was at a meeting, Stephen and Jon continued to work on the tunnels, with lights. As I say, motivation is strong. We are pushing hard toward January when we will all be off duty for a whole month.
It is incredibly satisfying to succeed when you set ambitious, possibly crazy goals. Usually we cover one greenhouse in one day. This was pretty amazing. Everyone but Stephen is taking today off. And Samuel might help him for a few hours because construction is different from vegetables.
We don't start early anymore because everything is often frozen. We can't work late because the sun goes down by 5:00. So this means we are cramming everything into the warmest part of the day. For Carrie and me last week, it meant that we picked and washed vegetables for six hours straight, no stopping, for two days in a row. In the summer we can easily work a ten hour day but there are breaks, there is lunch, there are other tasks to divert us. This is head-down, keep moving, fill those crates kind of work.
There aren't as many goals in the winter as there are in the summer. We are only planting and weeding inside the high tunnels, and there is no tractor work. The goals are to get the roots out of the ground before they freeze too much, to pick leafy stuff for the two markets and the die-hard Winter CSA folks, and to finish building the structures we need to get through the next season. The crew is small and experienced and motivated.
For months we have been waiting for an order of greenhouse plastic to arrive so we could put the second layer of plastic on all the tunnels before winter. Apparently our tunnels are not a normal size and also there has been a high demand for greenhouse plastic because we all had major hail storms during the summer and there was a run on plastic. The order finally came in a few days ago to our suppliers in Lancaster PA. On Monday Jon and I drove back from Boston and made it to Nolts Greenhouse Supply at exactly 5 PM, closing time. We jammed two very heavy eight foot long boxes into the mini van (which already had an awkwardly large box in it from Lilah's inventory) and now we could hope to get that project finished. We had shortened our Boston trip by one day when we looked at the weather forecast and realized that time was short.
Yesterday morning there were wind gusts up to 20 mph in Loudoun. The usual wisdom is that you put plastic on during dead calm days. The forecast said that the winds would diminish to 11 mph by early afternoon and continue to die down as the day wore on. The advice from our next door farmer neighbor was to wait until today when winds would be non-existent, but it might be snowing. Naturally, I decided to forge ahead and get it done, if possible, yesterday afternoon.
In the morning, the hard core Loudoun team spent several hours finishing pulling all the carrots. They were triumphant at lunchtime (not realizing how long the day would go). That was a huge accomplishment and the carrots are such an unexpected success since we tried so many times to get them to grow, and finally at the very last effort, they did. And they are amazingly delicious, so it all feels wonderful. The voles didn't even get to them much.
Jon and I rolled in just as the carrot harvesters were wrapping up their morning. Stephen was looking pretty triumphant himself, having worked until 11 PM the night before, with lights, to finish installing the fans at the end of the fancy new greenhouse. He was particularly pleased with one of his endwalls, which is a lyrical piece of art -- could be a sun or maybe a spider web. He is trying desperately to finish that structure before heading off to Hawaii in a day or so with his whole extended family. Motivation is strong.
As can happen when you have plastic buildings, one of our three lower tech tunnels had ripped and blown apart the night before so that was one more task to add to our ambitious list. While others went to a well-deserved lunch, Stephen and I started to deconstruct the broken caterpillar tunnel and uncover the ginger tunnel. By the time they all came back, we had prepared the damaged tunnel for a new cover. We all dragged the 150 foot long piece of plastic from the ginger tunnel and pulled it over the top of the bare ribs of the cat tunnel. Tada, almost all better. Just needed some ropes to be good as new. We set that aside for later.
The wind was not too bad. Seven of us got to work. In about five hours, we got three gigantic pieces of plastic pulled over the tops of three really tall tunnels (about 12 feet tall and 20 feet wide and about 150 feet long). Each roll of plastic weighs maybe 150 pounds, who can tell, it's really heavy when you try to move the box. We started with the hardest tunnel, not knowing whether we would be able to get everything done in one day. The technology for tacking all that plastic down is brilliant, but it uses up all your finger muscles. You have to jam this wiggle wire into a horizontal channel, securing the plastic tightly to the structure. Sometimes those channels can be well over your head, and so you are struggling to do work with your arms stretched as far up as you can. Who needs the gym.
In the middle of the afternoon, Michael arrived (generously, as he is not doing farm work now, while he works night and day to finish building his yurt) and he and Stephen put the ropes back on the cat tunnel. That one will last all winter, no question. The other one broke for reasons that we can understand and will not repeat.
As we were nearing the end, I started to complain about starvation. I asked Stephen what people do when they want to order food to be delivered. None of us had any idea, but he called Julia and Julia figured out how to order take-out Thai food. While we finished up the last edges (Samuel high on a ladder pushing the wiggle wire into channels on the top of the end ribs 12 feet up as the sun went down), Jon went to get our dinner.
I never allow conversations that devolve into comparisons of how hard each of us is working. That is not productive. But these people have been working really, really hard in the last week and more, and yesterday was a crescendo of work. I showed them on my phone a picture of the crew on December 4, 2017 after we had finished putting plastic on one of the tunnels. It is important to keep perspective. We have been here before, we will be here again.
We all went into the heated office and had a delicious dinner together. Then everyone but Stephen and Jon went home to get into their pajamas. While I watched Shaia for another few hours because Julia was at a meeting, Stephen and Jon continued to work on the tunnels, with lights. As I say, motivation is strong. We are pushing hard toward January when we will all be off duty for a whole month.
It is incredibly satisfying to succeed when you set ambitious, possibly crazy goals. Usually we cover one greenhouse in one day. This was pretty amazing. Everyone but Stephen is taking today off. And Samuel might help him for a few hours because construction is different from vegetables.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Conference Call Not Holding My Attention
At this exact moment, I am on a conference call that has just completed its third hour, one hour to go. As so often happens, the system doesn't work perfectly. We were struggling with audio, the sound was garbled, people were talking along and we were only hearing some little piece of what they were saying. My computer is just in spinning, spinning mode trying to retrieve its audio connection so I am listening on the phone.
I am feeling so stuck indoors. I missed the weekly ritual of meeting the market trucks as they came in -- for the last time of the year for Takoma Park. This week is usually a much busier and more exciting one than recent weeks as we are coming up to Thanksgiving and we are leaving for the winter. So I was sad to miss all the reports and the party atmosphere. I did get to be there while both trucks were loading up this morning, and they were full of carrots, which is just plain exciting.
Yesterday the snow had mostly melted and we knew there were lots of carrots out there in the mud. It felt really compelling to go back out there and pull some more carrots so everyone could have as much as they could possibly want. I put on two pairs of gloves and too many layers and went out to Loudoun to start pulling. Got about a half an hour ahead of Sam before she came out to start bunching. As the morning wore on, the ground got wetter and wetter as the snow melted. By noon I could barely lift my feet out of the mud. Halfway through the morning, I called Carrie to tell her we needed help, the mud was slowing us down.
We rolled home in the early afternoon, triumphant, with 20 more crates of carrots that were coated with pounds and pounds of mud. Carrie and I bundled up in aprons and gloves and put our heads down and washed all those carrots in 90 minutes of concentrated effort.
Here are the photos of the two markets today, with dueling carrot displays:
I am having a hard time focusing on this call, clearly.
The other memory that keeps floating through my mind is of the little pig that died last week. It was really cold on Saturday night, the pig was ailing with a terrible sounding cough, and it was certainly in trouble. On Sunday morning I went to look for it and found it lying in its little food trough, dead. Out of the corner of my eye I had seen a fox slipping out of the pen, so I knew something was up. I didn't want to leave the little pig in the pen to be eaten, so I just picked up the pan with the pig in it and looked for a place to put it. I balanced it on the top of the fence, just under the barn roof, hoping no varmints would come to eat it.
And there the pig stayed for five days, surprising people who came to feed the pigs. It was a cold week, sort of like refrigerator temperatures. The pig didn't change. Finally Michael came in from Loudoun for a meeting and I asked him to do something about that poor dead pig. He could bury it or he could take it down into the woods. He took it on a golf cart and left it way down in the woods, for anyone to eat. Since it wasn't a Jewish pig, it didn't get a quick burial, and once it had already had a five day period of viewing, it didn't seem so bad to let it be eaten by appreciative forest dwellers.
The conversation on the phone is about negative cash flow and budgeting and the financial stresses of our regional nonprofit that exists to support sustainable agriculture in the South. It is so much more interesting to think about my own sustainable ag topics.
I am feeling so stuck indoors. I missed the weekly ritual of meeting the market trucks as they came in -- for the last time of the year for Takoma Park. This week is usually a much busier and more exciting one than recent weeks as we are coming up to Thanksgiving and we are leaving for the winter. So I was sad to miss all the reports and the party atmosphere. I did get to be there while both trucks were loading up this morning, and they were full of carrots, which is just plain exciting.
Yesterday the snow had mostly melted and we knew there were lots of carrots out there in the mud. It felt really compelling to go back out there and pull some more carrots so everyone could have as much as they could possibly want. I put on two pairs of gloves and too many layers and went out to Loudoun to start pulling. Got about a half an hour ahead of Sam before she came out to start bunching. As the morning wore on, the ground got wetter and wetter as the snow melted. By noon I could barely lift my feet out of the mud. Halfway through the morning, I called Carrie to tell her we needed help, the mud was slowing us down.
We rolled home in the early afternoon, triumphant, with 20 more crates of carrots that were coated with pounds and pounds of mud. Carrie and I bundled up in aprons and gloves and put our heads down and washed all those carrots in 90 minutes of concentrated effort.
Here are the photos of the two markets today, with dueling carrot displays:
I am having a hard time focusing on this call, clearly.
The other memory that keeps floating through my mind is of the little pig that died last week. It was really cold on Saturday night, the pig was ailing with a terrible sounding cough, and it was certainly in trouble. On Sunday morning I went to look for it and found it lying in its little food trough, dead. Out of the corner of my eye I had seen a fox slipping out of the pen, so I knew something was up. I didn't want to leave the little pig in the pen to be eaten, so I just picked up the pan with the pig in it and looked for a place to put it. I balanced it on the top of the fence, just under the barn roof, hoping no varmints would come to eat it.
And there the pig stayed for five days, surprising people who came to feed the pigs. It was a cold week, sort of like refrigerator temperatures. The pig didn't change. Finally Michael came in from Loudoun for a meeting and I asked him to do something about that poor dead pig. He could bury it or he could take it down into the woods. He took it on a golf cart and left it way down in the woods, for anyone to eat. Since it wasn't a Jewish pig, it didn't get a quick burial, and once it had already had a five day period of viewing, it didn't seem so bad to let it be eaten by appreciative forest dwellers.
The conversation on the phone is about negative cash flow and budgeting and the financial stresses of our regional nonprofit that exists to support sustainable agriculture in the South. It is so much more interesting to think about my own sustainable ag topics.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Visiting Season
In the off-season, I look for opportunities to visit old people or people who are stuck at home. I have the time and I like sitting around with people who have lived long lives and have lots of opinions, and often they really need the visits. Sometimes they already have full days of visitors (like Billy Stalcup who had eight children who came to see him often) and sometimes they have long, quiet days (like Mrs. Beall with her soap operas) and sometimes they are struggling with their health and their families appreciate the visits too. I have to be okay with knowing these people will die in the near future, or at least that they will continue to decline. It isn't really depressing or distressing, as long as they still like to be visited. My last visit with Mrs. Beall was sad because I don't think she knew who I was, really, even though I talked to her as if she remembered me.
Anyway, there is a new chapter unfolding in the visiting season. This time the people aren't old, but they are stuck at home. My mother and I just went to see our long ago worker Carrie, who married Al, a long ago worker from Cox Farms. They live far from here, so it takes planning to make a visit, but the trip was well worth it. Al is in bed because he has ALS and Carrie is his caregiver, day and night. It is a tough situation but they are pragmatic, steady, confronting everything head on, and not giving up. Al will of course continue to decline but in the meantime, they are living their lives together.
We didn't know exactly how we would be able to be helpful, but we thought there would be opportunities. Luckily it only took Carrie a few minutes to think of ways that we could make her life a little better -- without having to learn all the ins and outs of caring for Al. We were there to take care of Carrie, which takes much less training and is much less scary.
Her first request was that we see why the vacuum cleaner wasn't working because she hadn't been able to vacuum for a long time. They have three cats, they used to have a big furry dog in the house, she herself has long hair, and the house was in need of some suctioning. I am no mechanic but luckily the vacuum cleaner was a modern one, made of plastic and with lots of buttons to push to disassemble things. So I started to take it apart and find all the stuff that needed to be disentangled. Success. I vacuumed everywhere I could and it made us all feel better.
My mother broke down a hallway full of boxes that needed to be recycled, and packed them up in tidy piles for pickup. I cleaned out drawers that had been left to the mice/rats and since it wasn't my stuff I threw lots of detritus away. My mother gave Al a hand massage and melted him with a head massage too. I made a big pot of chicken soup and we all had lunch together. My mother and Carrie went on a quick march around their property, to observe the trees that had fallen and to see the state of the yard. Al used to take care of the outdoors before he couldn't anymore, and Carrie just needed to see it all.
This is such an unusual opportunity, to be able to go and help without feeling like we are imposing or making work for the family. I want to go again, and maybe someday I will be brave enough to learn to manage the machines that keep Al breathing and clear his chest. They have another friend who comes sometimes and does make it possible for Carrie to leave the house because she has learned to do all those life maintenance tasks. Carrie recently had to leave home for 24 hours when her father died, and this friend came to care for Al. For the most part, they are managing alone. There are visiting nurses who come to bathe Al and check on things and the insurance stuff is a nightmare. There are probably more services they could get but just figuring it all out is time consuming and complicated. Carrie also works full time on her computer, as a manager in a company that she has worked at for many years. She had three phone meetings while we were there. The whole thing is mind-boggling, really.
I don't have time to reflect on all of this now, but there is much to say. I am humbled by all of it. More later.
Anyway, there is a new chapter unfolding in the visiting season. This time the people aren't old, but they are stuck at home. My mother and I just went to see our long ago worker Carrie, who married Al, a long ago worker from Cox Farms. They live far from here, so it takes planning to make a visit, but the trip was well worth it. Al is in bed because he has ALS and Carrie is his caregiver, day and night. It is a tough situation but they are pragmatic, steady, confronting everything head on, and not giving up. Al will of course continue to decline but in the meantime, they are living their lives together.
We didn't know exactly how we would be able to be helpful, but we thought there would be opportunities. Luckily it only took Carrie a few minutes to think of ways that we could make her life a little better -- without having to learn all the ins and outs of caring for Al. We were there to take care of Carrie, which takes much less training and is much less scary.
Her first request was that we see why the vacuum cleaner wasn't working because she hadn't been able to vacuum for a long time. They have three cats, they used to have a big furry dog in the house, she herself has long hair, and the house was in need of some suctioning. I am no mechanic but luckily the vacuum cleaner was a modern one, made of plastic and with lots of buttons to push to disassemble things. So I started to take it apart and find all the stuff that needed to be disentangled. Success. I vacuumed everywhere I could and it made us all feel better.
My mother broke down a hallway full of boxes that needed to be recycled, and packed them up in tidy piles for pickup. I cleaned out drawers that had been left to the mice/rats and since it wasn't my stuff I threw lots of detritus away. My mother gave Al a hand massage and melted him with a head massage too. I made a big pot of chicken soup and we all had lunch together. My mother and Carrie went on a quick march around their property, to observe the trees that had fallen and to see the state of the yard. Al used to take care of the outdoors before he couldn't anymore, and Carrie just needed to see it all.
This is such an unusual opportunity, to be able to go and help without feeling like we are imposing or making work for the family. I want to go again, and maybe someday I will be brave enough to learn to manage the machines that keep Al breathing and clear his chest. They have another friend who comes sometimes and does make it possible for Carrie to leave the house because she has learned to do all those life maintenance tasks. Carrie recently had to leave home for 24 hours when her father died, and this friend came to care for Al. For the most part, they are managing alone. There are visiting nurses who come to bathe Al and check on things and the insurance stuff is a nightmare. There are probably more services they could get but just figuring it all out is time consuming and complicated. Carrie also works full time on her computer, as a manager in a company that she has worked at for many years. She had three phone meetings while we were there. The whole thing is mind-boggling, really.
I don't have time to reflect on all of this now, but there is much to say. I am humbled by all of it. More later.
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Just One Lap To Go
Yesterday as we moved the sweet potatoes one more time, getting them out of the greenhouse before the temperature outside got into the 20s, I had the feeling that we were rounding some bases, running some final laps, getting really close to the end. Those sweet potatoes had been out of the ground for about a month, they had been moved from the field to the greenhouse for curing and then they had to be sorted and moved again to a safe, warm space for storing. It is hard to describe the volume of sweet potatoes we have moved in the last month. Eight tons is how much weight, 650 baskets is how much volume. They grow underground, of course, so they were coated with mud this year. In addition to the weight of the potatoes, we were hauling many pounds of mud around.
This week has been full of those last big pushes. Even though it is November and we tend to start late and end so much earlier than even a month ago, the tasks are chunky. We had to wait for another round of rain to go by so we could finish mulching all the garlic. In fact, it doesn't take very long to mulch ten beds of garlic, or about 1/3 of an acre. It takes six people who are moving right along about two hours to unload the bales and spread them all out -- especially if we get Michael to help. He mulches about three times as fast as a normal person.
But we had so many other things to do on that day that we had to forcefully schedule a mulching date for 4 PM. And everyone had to leave what they were doing (picking for the weekend) and come to the field from all over the farm and switch gears so we could finish that task.
On both farms, we checked off tasks for the last time all week long. Yesterday, before the next rain came, the crews dragged sandbags and row cover out, putting flimsy white material over acres of radishes and tatsoi and lettuce, keeping the leaves from the harshest frosts and keeping the ground below from freezing hard. Personally I really dislike that task and I am fortunately old and gimpy enough to be able to assign myself other reasonably important things to do. By the time it started to rain really hard, the crops were covered (and today it is so windy that in half an hour Carrie and I have to go out and try again to secure the flapping, whipping row cover for the night).
We have one more market weekend to go, one more CSA week to go. Then we pause and celebrate, have some meetings, switch gears again and start the winter season. We can see the finish line. There are carrots to pull, the last potatoes to scrabble out of the ground, parsnips to finally dig after six months of slow growing, and one more round of leafy greens to collect up. All of these farm rituals are so cyclical and timeless. And we know it is time to start hibernating because it is finally too cold to have any fun out there. It's muddy and windy and slippery and frigid. Time to sprint to the end.
This week has been full of those last big pushes. Even though it is November and we tend to start late and end so much earlier than even a month ago, the tasks are chunky. We had to wait for another round of rain to go by so we could finish mulching all the garlic. In fact, it doesn't take very long to mulch ten beds of garlic, or about 1/3 of an acre. It takes six people who are moving right along about two hours to unload the bales and spread them all out -- especially if we get Michael to help. He mulches about three times as fast as a normal person.
But we had so many other things to do on that day that we had to forcefully schedule a mulching date for 4 PM. And everyone had to leave what they were doing (picking for the weekend) and come to the field from all over the farm and switch gears so we could finish that task.
On both farms, we checked off tasks for the last time all week long. Yesterday, before the next rain came, the crews dragged sandbags and row cover out, putting flimsy white material over acres of radishes and tatsoi and lettuce, keeping the leaves from the harshest frosts and keeping the ground below from freezing hard. Personally I really dislike that task and I am fortunately old and gimpy enough to be able to assign myself other reasonably important things to do. By the time it started to rain really hard, the crops were covered (and today it is so windy that in half an hour Carrie and I have to go out and try again to secure the flapping, whipping row cover for the night).
We have one more market weekend to go, one more CSA week to go. Then we pause and celebrate, have some meetings, switch gears again and start the winter season. We can see the finish line. There are carrots to pull, the last potatoes to scrabble out of the ground, parsnips to finally dig after six months of slow growing, and one more round of leafy greens to collect up. All of these farm rituals are so cyclical and timeless. And we know it is time to start hibernating because it is finally too cold to have any fun out there. It's muddy and windy and slippery and frigid. Time to sprint to the end.
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Farewell to My Tractor
When we were in high school, there was a year when our father decided to pay me and Lani for our work by selling us each a tractor. As with so many things that he decided for us, this helped to shape how we thought and who we were. My tractor cost $900. I think Lani's was $1500.
Lani got a John Deere 2010 -- a sturdy green tractor with a wide front end and lots of space between the seat and the steering wheel. John Deere tractors are designed for maximum driver comfort. I am sure there are other design features that are notable, but that's the one that I remember the most.The seats are soft and squishy, with a back that is cushioned. Her tractor was a diesel. It spent much of its life perched at the top of the hill so it could be roll started by just sitting on the seat and putting it in gear and pushing the clutch. By the time you got halfway down the driveway the smoke was puffing out of the muffler. I remember the sound perfectly because I still drive a Deere today. It's a deep, loud rumble that you can sing along with.
I got a Farmall C -- a tricycle tractor, red, with a fantastic turning radius (a tricycle can turn on one wheel), gas powered and made sometime in the 1940s, probably. It is the next size up from our all-time favorite Farmall B. This series of tractors was designed for vegetable farmers -- good clearance, very easy to see everything from where you sit, narrow tires so they can fit between the rows. The C had a bunch of implements that attached to the two arms on the back -- it was called a "two point hitch." It also had a Power Take-off (so did Lani's and hers had a Three Point Hitch, with a third arm behind the seat that made it possible to lift implements off the ground). It had a metal seat with a big spring under it, very comfortable but no back. The steering wheel was metal. There were three gears and reverse. Top speed probably fifteen miles per hour.
I loved my tractor. Lani loved her tractor. There were lots of differences between these tractors and we generally always felt that our own tractor was the best of the two. Mine was more elegant in so many ways. Hers had more versatility and power. Mine looked better. She thought hers was more attractive.
What really differentiated our tractors and their use was the mowers they powered. Lani's tractor did the bushhogging (rotary mower with big blades, powered by a PTO shaft, attached at three points) and mine did the sickle bar mowing. This is why I say my tractor was more elegant. Sickle bar mowing is an elegant activity that takes a lot of dexterity and skill and patience. Bushhogging is just driving around blasting everything to bits. Both are deeply satisfying. Sickle bar mowing is much harder.
The sickle bar mower that went with the C was attached at the two points behind the tractor, so it could be lifted off the ground with the hydraulics. That mower was used to mow down rye before baling. The rye had to be standing. If it had already fallen down, then it had to be bushhogged to bits. Not optimal. Much nicer to have long, not tangled stalks of rye.
On a hot dry day in May, out I would go with my tractor and mower to a field of rye. (Usually I had to drive on Route 7 to get there, since all the rye fields were between one and four miles away.) Gear shift in one hand, steering wheel in the other, one foot for the clutch, one foot for one of the two brake pedals. I would approach the first pass for mowing, straight on, and drop the mower and engage the PTO, all in motion. The sickle bar was seven feet long and it would ride just above the ground, its triangular teeth gnashing back and forth so fast I couldn't even see them. The blades had to be in motion as we entered the field or everything would get gummed up. Second gear was good. If all went well, we could just chomp our way around the field. If all went well, the rye would just fall gracefully behind us, all nice and neat. Then it would dry for a few days before I came back with the rake.
Of course everything didn't always go well. If I hit a big rock, one of the triangular blades could just break or pop off. Then I had to stop everything, pull the blade out of the mower, use a punch to remove the broken tooth, get a new tooth from the toolbox, use a hammer to smash the two soft little rivets into the holes and attach a new tooth. The hardest part was pulling the bar out of the mower and putting it back in. Everything had to be lined up just right. I was not an intuitive mechanic type. It would be many years before I met Jon and could give him all my mechanical tasks.
Mowing was so satisfying when it went well. Bad things happened all the time (most memorable was cutting the legs off a baby deer, that was awful) but there were many hours of happy bouncing through the fields, laying the rye or the grass down neatly.
After we stopped doing our own baling, my tractor stopped having so much purpose. It became a statue in front of the stand in Purcellville, just sitting out in the weather. We didn't know it, but that was the death of that tractor. A few years ago, we decided to bring my tractor back into the fold, but when Jon and Benjamin were doing some work on it they found that the block was cracked from water freezing in it. Alas.
Just the other day, Jon figured out what to do with my tractor. He convinced an incredibly dedicated mechanic who only works on International Harvesters to buy the tractor, even though it had a cracked block and was in pieces. He loaded it onto a trailer and drove it to Shippensburg, PA where he was retrieving another IH tractor of ours that had just had a major make-over. Jon got $1000 for my C. I hope the mechanic does bring it back to life and someone else can love it as much as I did.
This is my last view of the tractor that my father made me buy. It was a great purchase.
Lani got a John Deere 2010 -- a sturdy green tractor with a wide front end and lots of space between the seat and the steering wheel. John Deere tractors are designed for maximum driver comfort. I am sure there are other design features that are notable, but that's the one that I remember the most.The seats are soft and squishy, with a back that is cushioned. Her tractor was a diesel. It spent much of its life perched at the top of the hill so it could be roll started by just sitting on the seat and putting it in gear and pushing the clutch. By the time you got halfway down the driveway the smoke was puffing out of the muffler. I remember the sound perfectly because I still drive a Deere today. It's a deep, loud rumble that you can sing along with.
I got a Farmall C -- a tricycle tractor, red, with a fantastic turning radius (a tricycle can turn on one wheel), gas powered and made sometime in the 1940s, probably. It is the next size up from our all-time favorite Farmall B. This series of tractors was designed for vegetable farmers -- good clearance, very easy to see everything from where you sit, narrow tires so they can fit between the rows. The C had a bunch of implements that attached to the two arms on the back -- it was called a "two point hitch." It also had a Power Take-off (so did Lani's and hers had a Three Point Hitch, with a third arm behind the seat that made it possible to lift implements off the ground). It had a metal seat with a big spring under it, very comfortable but no back. The steering wheel was metal. There were three gears and reverse. Top speed probably fifteen miles per hour.
I loved my tractor. Lani loved her tractor. There were lots of differences between these tractors and we generally always felt that our own tractor was the best of the two. Mine was more elegant in so many ways. Hers had more versatility and power. Mine looked better. She thought hers was more attractive.
What really differentiated our tractors and their use was the mowers they powered. Lani's tractor did the bushhogging (rotary mower with big blades, powered by a PTO shaft, attached at three points) and mine did the sickle bar mowing. This is why I say my tractor was more elegant. Sickle bar mowing is an elegant activity that takes a lot of dexterity and skill and patience. Bushhogging is just driving around blasting everything to bits. Both are deeply satisfying. Sickle bar mowing is much harder.
The sickle bar mower that went with the C was attached at the two points behind the tractor, so it could be lifted off the ground with the hydraulics. That mower was used to mow down rye before baling. The rye had to be standing. If it had already fallen down, then it had to be bushhogged to bits. Not optimal. Much nicer to have long, not tangled stalks of rye.
On a hot dry day in May, out I would go with my tractor and mower to a field of rye. (Usually I had to drive on Route 7 to get there, since all the rye fields were between one and four miles away.) Gear shift in one hand, steering wheel in the other, one foot for the clutch, one foot for one of the two brake pedals. I would approach the first pass for mowing, straight on, and drop the mower and engage the PTO, all in motion. The sickle bar was seven feet long and it would ride just above the ground, its triangular teeth gnashing back and forth so fast I couldn't even see them. The blades had to be in motion as we entered the field or everything would get gummed up. Second gear was good. If all went well, we could just chomp our way around the field. If all went well, the rye would just fall gracefully behind us, all nice and neat. Then it would dry for a few days before I came back with the rake.
Of course everything didn't always go well. If I hit a big rock, one of the triangular blades could just break or pop off. Then I had to stop everything, pull the blade out of the mower, use a punch to remove the broken tooth, get a new tooth from the toolbox, use a hammer to smash the two soft little rivets into the holes and attach a new tooth. The hardest part was pulling the bar out of the mower and putting it back in. Everything had to be lined up just right. I was not an intuitive mechanic type. It would be many years before I met Jon and could give him all my mechanical tasks.
Mowing was so satisfying when it went well. Bad things happened all the time (most memorable was cutting the legs off a baby deer, that was awful) but there were many hours of happy bouncing through the fields, laying the rye or the grass down neatly.
After we stopped doing our own baling, my tractor stopped having so much purpose. It became a statue in front of the stand in Purcellville, just sitting out in the weather. We didn't know it, but that was the death of that tractor. A few years ago, we decided to bring my tractor back into the fold, but when Jon and Benjamin were doing some work on it they found that the block was cracked from water freezing in it. Alas.
Just the other day, Jon figured out what to do with my tractor. He convinced an incredibly dedicated mechanic who only works on International Harvesters to buy the tractor, even though it had a cracked block and was in pieces. He loaded it onto a trailer and drove it to Shippensburg, PA where he was retrieving another IH tractor of ours that had just had a major make-over. Jon got $1000 for my C. I hope the mechanic does bring it back to life and someone else can love it as much as I did.
This is my last view of the tractor that my father made me buy. It was a great purchase.
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Saturday, October 6
I have written this postcard before -- I have been in this place before. Many times people go back to the same spot and send the same postcards back. We do it all the time when we go to Hawaii. Anyway, I haven't written anything in a month, and that's mostly because I haven't had a single new thought, they are all the same thoughts that roll around every year at this time.
It finally stopped raining on September 28. We have gone a full week with almost no rain, except for a few showers in the night. Now and then there is a window, an opportunity, a chance and we just grab it and do everything we can to squash as much work into that opening.
We didn't realize it at first, but today was one of those days. I am just going to revel in it and roll it all out.
At 6 AM, four market trucks loaded up the stuff that was in the coolers overnight and headed out to Leesburg, Falls Church, Arlington and Reston. For about an hour after they all leave, I wait to hear whether anything important was left behind and answer texts about prices and other last minute mysteries. No calls for forgotten items. The trucks had been loaded by Carrie and Michael, which is as good as it gets.
I got in the hot tub for ten minutes and got ready for the day.
Drove to Loudoun with one stop to pick up Jon who was dropping off a vehicle for repair. He helped me unload my cargo of pumpkins etc. at the stand in Purcellville.
Jon planted spinach (we have been trying to plant spinach for six weeks, without success...we hope this time is the real one) and then turned compost. Then he headed back to Vienna to press cider.
I picked beets and celeriac and kale for the CSA and Takoma Park. At the same time, Sam and Samuel were picking herbs and ginger and kale and collards for Dupont. The morning flew by.
We loaded up about 40 baskets of sweet potatoes that we had left out in the field yesterday and then I started loading the van with the crates of beets etc. that I had picked. It quickly filled up to the ceiling.
Meanwhile, back in Vienna, Carrie came home early from the market and started seeding Crimson Clover (six weeks later than optimum, that's how long we have been waiting for this moment) by filling a belly seeder and walking back and forth through the fields that I had tilled up a few days ago.
Ciara came back to Loudoun after working a very busy market in Falls Church and came right to the bean field, ready to work after nine hours of driving and selling. These people are amazing. We picked beans as fast as we could but the day was getting away from us. We hadn't washed anything yet and I was still 45 minutes from home.
Megan came home from the Leesburg market, unloaded her truck, had lunch and came back out to help Samuel spray. There are way too many cabbage moths flying around and we can't wait until Tuesday when everyone will be back at the farm again. Spraying is hard physical work, and Megan had also already worked for nine hours. We don't usually need to work so much after market, but today was one of those days.
Crammed as much as we could in around the edges of the van and I headed home. Ciara and Sam started washing the pile of vegetables that will go to Dupont Circle tomorrow.
Carrie was ready for me, she had the sinks full and the carts empty. We washed as fast as we could. Finished in half an hour.
It feels really good to have vegetables to pick and wash, to have something to sell again, to be able to plant seeds, to be able to work all day with no rain.
It was a huge day. We have these days from time to time, and they are always memorable. The last one was two weeks ago, and all the seeds we managed to get in the ground came up (except the spinach). It is all going to be fine.
It finally stopped raining on September 28. We have gone a full week with almost no rain, except for a few showers in the night. Now and then there is a window, an opportunity, a chance and we just grab it and do everything we can to squash as much work into that opening.
We didn't realize it at first, but today was one of those days. I am just going to revel in it and roll it all out.
At 6 AM, four market trucks loaded up the stuff that was in the coolers overnight and headed out to Leesburg, Falls Church, Arlington and Reston. For about an hour after they all leave, I wait to hear whether anything important was left behind and answer texts about prices and other last minute mysteries. No calls for forgotten items. The trucks had been loaded by Carrie and Michael, which is as good as it gets.
I got in the hot tub for ten minutes and got ready for the day.
Drove to Loudoun with one stop to pick up Jon who was dropping off a vehicle for repair. He helped me unload my cargo of pumpkins etc. at the stand in Purcellville.
Jon planted spinach (we have been trying to plant spinach for six weeks, without success...we hope this time is the real one) and then turned compost. Then he headed back to Vienna to press cider.
I picked beets and celeriac and kale for the CSA and Takoma Park. At the same time, Sam and Samuel were picking herbs and ginger and kale and collards for Dupont. The morning flew by.
We loaded up about 40 baskets of sweet potatoes that we had left out in the field yesterday and then I started loading the van with the crates of beets etc. that I had picked. It quickly filled up to the ceiling.
Meanwhile, back in Vienna, Carrie came home early from the market and started seeding Crimson Clover (six weeks later than optimum, that's how long we have been waiting for this moment) by filling a belly seeder and walking back and forth through the fields that I had tilled up a few days ago.
Ciara came back to Loudoun after working a very busy market in Falls Church and came right to the bean field, ready to work after nine hours of driving and selling. These people are amazing. We picked beans as fast as we could but the day was getting away from us. We hadn't washed anything yet and I was still 45 minutes from home.
Megan came home from the Leesburg market, unloaded her truck, had lunch and came back out to help Samuel spray. There are way too many cabbage moths flying around and we can't wait until Tuesday when everyone will be back at the farm again. Spraying is hard physical work, and Megan had also already worked for nine hours. We don't usually need to work so much after market, but today was one of those days.
Crammed as much as we could in around the edges of the van and I headed home. Ciara and Sam started washing the pile of vegetables that will go to Dupont Circle tomorrow.
Carrie was ready for me, she had the sinks full and the carts empty. We washed as fast as we could. Finished in half an hour.
It feels really good to have vegetables to pick and wash, to have something to sell again, to be able to plant seeds, to be able to work all day with no rain.
It was a huge day. We have these days from time to time, and they are always memorable. The last one was two weeks ago, and all the seeds we managed to get in the ground came up (except the spinach). It is all going to be fine.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Weeds Grow 24/7, No Holidays
One week ago today, well into a long lasting heat wave, I got up at dawn so I could get a few hours of weeding in before it got too hot. After two hours of mud weeding (that's what I call it when it is too wet to use a tool), every item of my clothing was as wet as if I had jumped into a pond. Dew and sweat and mud. Disgusting.
The next day I did the same thing, but with a group of willing workers. We weeded until the humidity was too thick to go on. Again, the pond soaked our clothes.
The third day was the same. We got a lot done. We were feeling optimistic about making headway on the weeds -- it was dry enough to use a tool.
On Thursday Jon and I skipped town for a day, but there weren't enough workers to continue the weeding. We were into the picking part of the week, and the weeds were given free rein for a few days.
Those weeds are much on my mind. But it has rained four more inches since we last had a chance to get out there so we are back to no tools, and in fact it is too wet to venture into the fields at all.
As it happens, today is Rosh Hashanah. I got up late, read my stories for book club, lounged in the hot tub, and ignored the weeds. All day today I will ignore the weeds. I will sit and sing with my choir friends while the weeds grow.
The problem is, there is a hurricane expected at the end of this week. The weeds are definitely getting the upper hand.
When I started to write this, I was going to talk about the feeling of slipping into an alternate reality with this holiday right in the middle of everything. And about how it feels suddenly like the off season. But it turns out, that was just aspirational -- thinking that I could successfully take myself out of one reality and put myself fully into Jewish time. In a couple of hours, I will be able to do that. But at this moment, my mind is fully on the fields that are filling up with galansoga and pigweed and grass.
I haven't even got to the part about strategizing for the hurricane. It's too early for that.
The next day I did the same thing, but with a group of willing workers. We weeded until the humidity was too thick to go on. Again, the pond soaked our clothes.
The third day was the same. We got a lot done. We were feeling optimistic about making headway on the weeds -- it was dry enough to use a tool.
On Thursday Jon and I skipped town for a day, but there weren't enough workers to continue the weeding. We were into the picking part of the week, and the weeds were given free rein for a few days.
Those weeds are much on my mind. But it has rained four more inches since we last had a chance to get out there so we are back to no tools, and in fact it is too wet to venture into the fields at all.
As it happens, today is Rosh Hashanah. I got up late, read my stories for book club, lounged in the hot tub, and ignored the weeds. All day today I will ignore the weeds. I will sit and sing with my choir friends while the weeds grow.
The problem is, there is a hurricane expected at the end of this week. The weeds are definitely getting the upper hand.
When I started to write this, I was going to talk about the feeling of slipping into an alternate reality with this holiday right in the middle of everything. And about how it feels suddenly like the off season. But it turns out, that was just aspirational -- thinking that I could successfully take myself out of one reality and put myself fully into Jewish time. In a couple of hours, I will be able to do that. But at this moment, my mind is fully on the fields that are filling up with galansoga and pigweed and grass.
I haven't even got to the part about strategizing for the hurricane. It's too early for that.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
As Predictable as the Holidays
I told the workers last week that these two weeks -- the last week of August and the first week of September -- are the most challenging for the morale of farm people. Knowing this, I don't really slide into the ruts. But so many people do. Our crew in Loudoun, an upbeat and lovely bunch, is dragging. They are showing up on time, working hard, not complaining. But they are suffering from all the usual weight of the season -- fatigue, too much of the same thing, way too much heat and humidity, a feeling of endless work. Our crew in Vienna, on schedule, is dwindling to a tiny core group. Every year Carrie and I just pick up more and more of the slack, and we expect it.
I told the workers that most farms lose some workers during this period, but lately we have not had the drama and weeping that comes with this dark period.
My father hated this time of year. Zach hates this time and he experiences inner turmoil every August. Ellen had meltdowns just about every year in late August.
Even though we try to avoid the sink holes, some people fall right into them anyway, not knowing they are there. One of our best workers just had her hardest day ever yesterday, and it was just another day on the farm but she is too tired and too hard on herself.
A day after I alerted them to the season that we are in, I got a call from our neighbor farmer friend saying that one of his workers had just quit, for all the reasons that we know about (the cost benefit analysis for him just helped him to see that this was not enough fun to make it worth it). And then yesterday we lost one here in Vienna. She had been flagging but yesterday she just lost all momentum and gave up.
The thing is, it's all in our minds. Michael says that at their program in Innsbruck (peace studies, etc.) they described this part of the cycle -- the middle -- as the chaos period, or some such words. Here it is not chaos but people experience this time as overwhelming. Working hard in the heat for days and days can get right into your psyche.
For me it is just long days and short weeks but after a lifetime of living through this, I no longer feel the downward pull of emotional and physical fatigue. I have Jon and an air conditioned house (which would undoubtedly help those workers, I should think about that) and too much to think about.
Luckily, we are halfway through these predictably trying days and soon it will be cooler and the days will be shorter and we will be on the downward slope.
I told the workers that most farms lose some workers during this period, but lately we have not had the drama and weeping that comes with this dark period.
My father hated this time of year. Zach hates this time and he experiences inner turmoil every August. Ellen had meltdowns just about every year in late August.
Even though we try to avoid the sink holes, some people fall right into them anyway, not knowing they are there. One of our best workers just had her hardest day ever yesterday, and it was just another day on the farm but she is too tired and too hard on herself.
A day after I alerted them to the season that we are in, I got a call from our neighbor farmer friend saying that one of his workers had just quit, for all the reasons that we know about (the cost benefit analysis for him just helped him to see that this was not enough fun to make it worth it). And then yesterday we lost one here in Vienna. She had been flagging but yesterday she just lost all momentum and gave up.
The thing is, it's all in our minds. Michael says that at their program in Innsbruck (peace studies, etc.) they described this part of the cycle -- the middle -- as the chaos period, or some such words. Here it is not chaos but people experience this time as overwhelming. Working hard in the heat for days and days can get right into your psyche.
For me it is just long days and short weeks but after a lifetime of living through this, I no longer feel the downward pull of emotional and physical fatigue. I have Jon and an air conditioned house (which would undoubtedly help those workers, I should think about that) and too much to think about.
Luckily, we are halfway through these predictably trying days and soon it will be cooler and the days will be shorter and we will be on the downward slope.
Sunday, August 12, 2018
Extra-Curricular: Choir
At this time of year I don't do many activities that are off the farm. We do so much in-house socializing and we spend so much time working and eating and talking together that we don't think much about the world beyond. This is a blessing for us in these times.
But every Sunday evening I go to choir, and that is my favorite off-farm activity. I have been singing in the choir since Rebecca was 13, which is 13 years ago. This sticks in my mind because that was the year that Betsy Giller died and singing in the choir for her funeral was an honor and so hard. I was new and I didn't know all the tunes yet and I could barely read music and it was so hard to keep from crying.
I joined the choir because Nell suggested it, of course. She has managed to maneuver me into most of my off-farm pursuits (swimming being a notable exception as she is not excited about pools). Before that I had sung at Oberlin in Musical Union, a group of hundreds of singers who all knew far more than I did, and the assumptions about knowledge and experience were way out of line with what I had. I memorized my parts. It was fun and confusing. Before that I had spent all my growing up years singing with my siblings and cousins, from ballads to madrigals to folk songs.
When I joined the synagogue choir, I got to sit next to a very kind alto who has perfect pitch and is happy to help with orienting flustered newbies who haven't even learned to count yet. She helped me organize my music and she pointed to where we were and she made me feel welcome. For a few years I just refrained from singing the first note, having zero confidence that I would ever know what that note was supposed to be. I came in on the second note, no problem.
The choir went through some transitions of leadership and suffered some identity crises with changes in clergy. But most of us kept on coming to rehearsal anyway. We just love singing.
It has taken me years to learn what we are really doing -- there are dozens of versions of songs by Jewish composers that use the liturgy from the prayerbook. Once a month, the choir sings some menu of those versions during a Friday night service. We are there to lead the congregation in song, singing prayers. And then we sing for four long services at the High Holidays. And we usually sing a Chanukah concert and a spring concert. There is a lot of rehearsing over the course of the year.
It is the rehearsing that I love the best. And now that we have a new choir director who is also the accompanist, we are on a roll. There is no cross-channel miscommunicating between the director and the accompanist. He gets to do it all, and luckily he is talented enough to use his eyebrows and his breath and his face and one hand to cue us in and out. He listens really closely and makes us practice our vowels and our dynamics and our breathing. We do it over and over until it sounds right. He is enthusiastic and demanding but not hard to please. He starts rehearsals on time and ends them punctually. His piano playing seems effortless and perfect.
Lately, on Friday nights the alto section doesn't seem to be showing up, except for me. Five years ago this would have terrified me. Now I take it as a challenge if I have to sing my part all by myself. It's not my favorite but I learn so much from singing the harmony alone. Sometimes I do it just right and other times I get lost but what are they going to do, fire me?
It has helped that I have also been taking piano lessons for about ten years, which means that I have learned to read music, finally. It is all so satisfying. I will never be a soloist and I probably won't ever get past Early Intermediate piano books, but it doesn't matter. Just being able to sing my part in a group of equally engaged singers fills me with joy.
Because I come from a family of enthusiastic proselytizers, I can't help thinking that everyone would love to sing on a regular basis. It feels so meaningful, to learn something with other people, to work on a new piece, to get better at it, to sing with gusto. Why wouldn't everyone want to have a chance to do that?
It takes years to get settled into a new routine, find your spot in a new group, become comfortable being vulnerable. But it is worth it. Join a choir, everybody!
But every Sunday evening I go to choir, and that is my favorite off-farm activity. I have been singing in the choir since Rebecca was 13, which is 13 years ago. This sticks in my mind because that was the year that Betsy Giller died and singing in the choir for her funeral was an honor and so hard. I was new and I didn't know all the tunes yet and I could barely read music and it was so hard to keep from crying.
I joined the choir because Nell suggested it, of course. She has managed to maneuver me into most of my off-farm pursuits (swimming being a notable exception as she is not excited about pools). Before that I had sung at Oberlin in Musical Union, a group of hundreds of singers who all knew far more than I did, and the assumptions about knowledge and experience were way out of line with what I had. I memorized my parts. It was fun and confusing. Before that I had spent all my growing up years singing with my siblings and cousins, from ballads to madrigals to folk songs.
When I joined the synagogue choir, I got to sit next to a very kind alto who has perfect pitch and is happy to help with orienting flustered newbies who haven't even learned to count yet. She helped me organize my music and she pointed to where we were and she made me feel welcome. For a few years I just refrained from singing the first note, having zero confidence that I would ever know what that note was supposed to be. I came in on the second note, no problem.
The choir went through some transitions of leadership and suffered some identity crises with changes in clergy. But most of us kept on coming to rehearsal anyway. We just love singing.
It has taken me years to learn what we are really doing -- there are dozens of versions of songs by Jewish composers that use the liturgy from the prayerbook. Once a month, the choir sings some menu of those versions during a Friday night service. We are there to lead the congregation in song, singing prayers. And then we sing for four long services at the High Holidays. And we usually sing a Chanukah concert and a spring concert. There is a lot of rehearsing over the course of the year.
It is the rehearsing that I love the best. And now that we have a new choir director who is also the accompanist, we are on a roll. There is no cross-channel miscommunicating between the director and the accompanist. He gets to do it all, and luckily he is talented enough to use his eyebrows and his breath and his face and one hand to cue us in and out. He listens really closely and makes us practice our vowels and our dynamics and our breathing. We do it over and over until it sounds right. He is enthusiastic and demanding but not hard to please. He starts rehearsals on time and ends them punctually. His piano playing seems effortless and perfect.
Lately, on Friday nights the alto section doesn't seem to be showing up, except for me. Five years ago this would have terrified me. Now I take it as a challenge if I have to sing my part all by myself. It's not my favorite but I learn so much from singing the harmony alone. Sometimes I do it just right and other times I get lost but what are they going to do, fire me?
It has helped that I have also been taking piano lessons for about ten years, which means that I have learned to read music, finally. It is all so satisfying. I will never be a soloist and I probably won't ever get past Early Intermediate piano books, but it doesn't matter. Just being able to sing my part in a group of equally engaged singers fills me with joy.
Because I come from a family of enthusiastic proselytizers, I can't help thinking that everyone would love to sing on a regular basis. It feels so meaningful, to learn something with other people, to work on a new piece, to get better at it, to sing with gusto. Why wouldn't everyone want to have a chance to do that?
It takes years to get settled into a new routine, find your spot in a new group, become comfortable being vulnerable. But it is worth it. Join a choir, everybody!
Monday, July 23, 2018
When All You Can Think About is The Weather
It is 7:30 in the morning and already raining hard, with thunder and lightning. The forecast is for at least ten more days of rain, and we have had over seven inches in the last two days. It is hard not to feel afraid.
Yesterday when Sam came home from market (somehow it did not rain until it was time to pack up, which was a gift from the heavens -- waiting to dump the load until people had already had a chance to buy some beautiful tomatoes), she said exactly what I always think: "I hate it when people say that all this rain must be good for the garden." People have no idea. In no situation is a flood good for the garden. Not even if we were having a horrible drought would six inches of rain in one day be good for anything. No plant likes to be underwater, ever. All roots need to breathe.
We have 20 workers at this time of year and I doubt we can even step in the field right now. Our coolers have just about enough food in them to get through the CSA, but eventually we will need to go back out and find some more stuff to sell and distribute.
Weather is always the biggest risk factor for us, and as soon as it stops raining we will figure out what to do and how to move forward. Just before all this rain started I was talking to another farmer who was trying to decide whether to plant his fall carrots and beets now or wait until everything dried up again. We knew it would be a long wait, but we couldn't predict whether the seeds and the soil would stay in place. We still don't know. I think he decided to plant and see what happened. That is exactly what you do as a farmer. Our seeds were already in the ground and a small river has cut through the middle of that patch, as we have almost no fields that are actually level. Yesterday Zach went out and filled that gully with hay to try to slow the erosion.
In the olden days, it would take a hurricane to bring this much rain. Now this kind of thing happens much more regularly. Torrential downpours, wild hailstorms, such extremes. It is hard to know how to plan for periodic calamities.
But since we can't plan for them, we can only learn from each event. We have learned to pay tree people to trim the dead branches from the big trees around the stand so they won't come crashing down on us. We have learned to be alert to which roads have low bridges or a tendency to flood so we won't get stuck on the wrong side of the water on our way to market or traveling between farms. We always surround our fields with a wide border of grass so we won't lose all our soil (although we did lose an entire bed on Saturday, just washed every bit of soil down to the stand and away. Shocking.). We have generators. We pick most vegetables a few days ahead, just in case, as that has saved us many times.
There is no such thing as perfect weather, not even in California. Having to irrigate everything all the time is far from perfect. We have pretty deluxe conditions for growing vegetables here, on the whole, and we just have to cope with the increasing complications of the climate. But is it hard not to feel uneasy and tense when the rain gauge keeps overflowing. So many consequences in so many ways, and it is definitely not good for the garden.
And who calls this a garden, anyway. This is a farm. Gardens are a different scale. That's a whole other topic. I have to go check the rain gauge and stop ranting now.
Yesterday when Sam came home from market (somehow it did not rain until it was time to pack up, which was a gift from the heavens -- waiting to dump the load until people had already had a chance to buy some beautiful tomatoes), she said exactly what I always think: "I hate it when people say that all this rain must be good for the garden." People have no idea. In no situation is a flood good for the garden. Not even if we were having a horrible drought would six inches of rain in one day be good for anything. No plant likes to be underwater, ever. All roots need to breathe.
We have 20 workers at this time of year and I doubt we can even step in the field right now. Our coolers have just about enough food in them to get through the CSA, but eventually we will need to go back out and find some more stuff to sell and distribute.
Weather is always the biggest risk factor for us, and as soon as it stops raining we will figure out what to do and how to move forward. Just before all this rain started I was talking to another farmer who was trying to decide whether to plant his fall carrots and beets now or wait until everything dried up again. We knew it would be a long wait, but we couldn't predict whether the seeds and the soil would stay in place. We still don't know. I think he decided to plant and see what happened. That is exactly what you do as a farmer. Our seeds were already in the ground and a small river has cut through the middle of that patch, as we have almost no fields that are actually level. Yesterday Zach went out and filled that gully with hay to try to slow the erosion.
In the olden days, it would take a hurricane to bring this much rain. Now this kind of thing happens much more regularly. Torrential downpours, wild hailstorms, such extremes. It is hard to know how to plan for periodic calamities.
But since we can't plan for them, we can only learn from each event. We have learned to pay tree people to trim the dead branches from the big trees around the stand so they won't come crashing down on us. We have learned to be alert to which roads have low bridges or a tendency to flood so we won't get stuck on the wrong side of the water on our way to market or traveling between farms. We always surround our fields with a wide border of grass so we won't lose all our soil (although we did lose an entire bed on Saturday, just washed every bit of soil down to the stand and away. Shocking.). We have generators. We pick most vegetables a few days ahead, just in case, as that has saved us many times.
There is no such thing as perfect weather, not even in California. Having to irrigate everything all the time is far from perfect. We have pretty deluxe conditions for growing vegetables here, on the whole, and we just have to cope with the increasing complications of the climate. But is it hard not to feel uneasy and tense when the rain gauge keeps overflowing. So many consequences in so many ways, and it is definitely not good for the garden.
And who calls this a garden, anyway. This is a farm. Gardens are a different scale. That's a whole other topic. I have to go check the rain gauge and stop ranting now.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
I Still Miss Darryl
Who could guess that Darryl Wright would leave such an endurable trail of memories behind him? I truly think of him every single day, and he has been gone for 3 1/2 years already.
This morning at 6:00, while it was still only 76 degrees out, I tackled the vines that have been growing up onto our house. I clipped and pulled and dragged -- and sweated -- and remembered that Darryl used to come over from time to time with Clinton and deal with the wildness that surrounds our house. It was Darryl who planted it all originally, following my requests that the bushes grow tall and thick to no one would have to see everything on our porch. After 18 years, the viburnum is well over the top of the porch railing and the laurel out front hides the bottom eight feet of our house.
Working with one of our neighbors who cared deeply about landscaping, Darryl designed the areas and planted the trees and bushes that have filled up Blueberry Hill. This is really why I think of him every day -- I drive past the river birches in front of the Common House, the line of willow oaks along the walkway, the maples in the parking lot islands. Darryl knew how to make things grow. This place is leafy and beautiful.
I think of him every time I go swimming, of course. He swam so that he could lubricate his creaky joints. Now that is what I do too. He limped on his sore ankles. I limp on my sore knees. He would have loved to have a hot tub. That would have been divine for him.
He used to sit in a chair every CSA day and cheerfully fill bags with chard, making jokes all the time about how wet his pants were and what people would say when he went to the store. His answer, always, when someone asked him how he was: "I don't have any choice now, do I?" But he meant that in a positive way, that he was alive and here.
The room we built for Darryl is now under-utilized, but it is meant to be my mother's painting studio. She probably uses it more than I realize. The sign that Darryl posted outside says "New Shop Annex Studio," referring to the original name of the spot that his room now occupies. There used to be a Shop (where things got fixed) and then there was a New Shop and then there was an annex on the New Shop -- or maybe I am confused and the New Shop Annex was all one thing. Anyway, that room was his haven during the last years of his life. Cozy and dry and separate from all other activities. But too close to the pig pen for him.
Darryl left a bunch of legacies in addition to all the plantings. The shade cloth on the greenhouse, the Gravely tractor, the Loudoun farm (he located the property for my parents back when he was a real estate guy), the garden spaces in front of the stand, the funky table outside my mother's house that is positioned so she can set things down when she opens the front door, his son Philip who still brings by piles of reject goodies from his place of work. Some of us remember everything about the way he moved and talked, swore and laughed. And some people don't. But he is wrapped around so many pieces of our lives that it is hard to miss him, even if you never knew him.
This morning at 6:00, while it was still only 76 degrees out, I tackled the vines that have been growing up onto our house. I clipped and pulled and dragged -- and sweated -- and remembered that Darryl used to come over from time to time with Clinton and deal with the wildness that surrounds our house. It was Darryl who planted it all originally, following my requests that the bushes grow tall and thick to no one would have to see everything on our porch. After 18 years, the viburnum is well over the top of the porch railing and the laurel out front hides the bottom eight feet of our house.
Working with one of our neighbors who cared deeply about landscaping, Darryl designed the areas and planted the trees and bushes that have filled up Blueberry Hill. This is really why I think of him every day -- I drive past the river birches in front of the Common House, the line of willow oaks along the walkway, the maples in the parking lot islands. Darryl knew how to make things grow. This place is leafy and beautiful.
I think of him every time I go swimming, of course. He swam so that he could lubricate his creaky joints. Now that is what I do too. He limped on his sore ankles. I limp on my sore knees. He would have loved to have a hot tub. That would have been divine for him.
He used to sit in a chair every CSA day and cheerfully fill bags with chard, making jokes all the time about how wet his pants were and what people would say when he went to the store. His answer, always, when someone asked him how he was: "I don't have any choice now, do I?" But he meant that in a positive way, that he was alive and here.
The room we built for Darryl is now under-utilized, but it is meant to be my mother's painting studio. She probably uses it more than I realize. The sign that Darryl posted outside says "New Shop Annex Studio," referring to the original name of the spot that his room now occupies. There used to be a Shop (where things got fixed) and then there was a New Shop and then there was an annex on the New Shop -- or maybe I am confused and the New Shop Annex was all one thing. Anyway, that room was his haven during the last years of his life. Cozy and dry and separate from all other activities. But too close to the pig pen for him.
Darryl left a bunch of legacies in addition to all the plantings. The shade cloth on the greenhouse, the Gravely tractor, the Loudoun farm (he located the property for my parents back when he was a real estate guy), the garden spaces in front of the stand, the funky table outside my mother's house that is positioned so she can set things down when she opens the front door, his son Philip who still brings by piles of reject goodies from his place of work. Some of us remember everything about the way he moved and talked, swore and laughed. And some people don't. But he is wrapped around so many pieces of our lives that it is hard to miss him, even if you never knew him.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Magical Thinking Can Create a Magical Event
Even though we all moved through time together, toward the summer solstice and all that was planned for that day, it is impossible to tell this story in a linear fashion. It had a beginning and it did come to an end but the parts in between were an unpredictable journey, and the pace was erratic but unceasing. For those who know the masterminds behind the co-loveration festivities, this comes as no surprise. The rest of us just got on board and kept our knees bent as we followed the currents and spun around in the eddies.
I actually don't know the whole story because it was impossible to be in every place but everyone was having a similar experience. We all knew the end goal -- to have an event that would engage everyone, would allow everyone to feel that they had contributed, and that we would end up feeling like we had been present at a gathering that could be described as a wedding. We were making memories together for days and days.
Stephen and Julia, individually and also together, had a lot of ideas about what might be worth building or creating or doing. In the end, Stephen said they managed to accomplish about 10% of what he was imagining.
They chose the longest day of the year for spiritual reasons and practical ones too. There was a lot to fit in. And the days leading up to the solstice were also long days, which helped to make things possible. In addition, all the resources of the farm were much more available on the weekdays than they would have been on a weekend day. I admit, I encouraged them to choose that day. It was inconvenient for people with regular jobs but it was good for the rest of us.
They invited friends from around the world to join them for a few weeks of co-loveration and preparation. This meant that there was a group of millenials living and working and eating and talking and singing together for many days. Things naturally got untidy, systems were created to make the camp function smoothly. There were leaders who made charts and organized the meals and activities. People slept in the rustic spaces that were available. There was lots of cooking and cleaning. They had anticipated many of the issues and had assembled an outdoor kitchen. It rained more than normal so there was a lot more puddle and waterfall excitement than they were expecting.
And every day there was work to be done on the various projects. There was the dome that would be built out of long pieces of bamboo. The dome was ambitious in every way -- it needed to encircle the 200 people attending the ceremony. It needed to be erected and stay up. It needed to create a sense of sacred space. Stephen's two uncles (one Newcomb, one Snyder) with engineering skills spent long hours making the joints that would hold together all the poles that had unique diameters. They brought materials with them from Denver. Stephen's best friend from college spent hours with the groom, cutting and measuring the bamboo (that was growing along the Middleton border of the Vienna stand parking lot, planted in 2000). There were late nights as they assembled the dome in the clearing, and one night there was a mutiny after midnight when people just needed to go to bed.
The dance floor needed to be designed and built. Stephen's father and his side of the family spent a long weekend creating a dance floor that will be used again and again, and stored in a neat stack in the meantime.
The wedding clothes for the bride and groom were designed and sewn by his talented aunt who worked through the night on her creations. Because designs are fluid and the couple had lots of opinions, in the end, the groom's pants were never finished and he wore a sarong on his bottom half. But the bride's outfit was beautiful and complete. She looked like a stunning version of something from Aladdin. So did he.
The headdresses were designed and constructed by our neighbors who grow flowers. The crowns were wild and so lyrical, with purple grasses and spent sunflower heads and flowers and grapevines.
Because they have so many friends with so many talents, the possibilities were well beyond most people's imaginations. Two friends came down from New England to teach about and perform the task of killing four lambs (who were raised by a friend of ours), in a respectful and calm and not scary way. They led a workshop on tanning the hides and butchering the lambs.
Another friend left his farm to come and roast those lambs, building a structure for the fire and watching over the cooking for a long, hot day. He also cooked a few vegetarian dishes on the side.
Stephen's mother took responsibility for assembling all the normal infrastructure that is needed at a wedding: chairs, tables, dishes, tent, pitchers, linens, the works. She and her husband also cooked the rehearsal dinner meal which was supposed to be for 70 guests but ended up feeding 100.
Our household took the task of making all the dishes that would complement the roasted lamb at the wedding dinner -- Julia asked for Middle Eastern salads and got some recipes from a hip young chef they have befriended. I organized a vegetable chopping party in the Common House and we diced and sliced pounds and pounds of beets and kohlrabi and cucumbers and cantaloupe.. Jon made hundreds of pieces of falafel. Even he was impressed at how unstressful it was to cook for 200 people when you have a chopping party with 10 happy people.
Alissa baked pies and cakes for the dinners and lunches, using fruit from our freezers and blueberries from the bushes.
The wedding cake was made with organic whole wheat flour grown by Heinz and it was baked by one of Julia's talented friends. Five tiers, frosting was almost purple, they did the traditional last-minute construction in the cooler and carried the 60 pound cake to the table before it melted.
Jim's family had the job of setting up all the tables and making everything look nice under the tent. We hired six cheerful and hard-working PVF employees to keep the dishes moving -- there were lots of dishes to wash late into the night, two nights in a row.
One of Julia's friends took the job of sound man incredibly seriously and researched and purchased all the sound equipment, installed it and managed it. The next day, in the pouring rain, he was out in his full rain suit rolling up all the wires and repacking everything into boxes while everyone else was having brunch.
Miraculously, when it was time to have the rehearsal dinner, everyone was ready. We actually had a rehearsal so that the participants would know where to stand and what to expect. The rehearsal was conducted by another one of Julia's incredibly talented friends -- she knew how to manage everyone with grace and a big voice. It rained hard just as we were assembling under the huge tent, so we had to pause to see whether the lightning was going to move on past.
The best part of the dinner, other than just being together, was the "offerings" after the meal. Some people had been asked to prepare a song or a speech. One of Julia's dear friends from forever had written a song about learning that Julia had met her soulmate, and how she learned about Stephen through Julia's stories, It was a song that we could all listen to again and again if we ever get the chance. So sweet and so well told. The chorus was, "he braided my hair...he took a bunch from here, a bunch from there, and another bunch from over there." It is impossible to describe how our hearts melted.
I didn't attend all the festivities on the solstice but they had a dawn service at 5:45, a special meal, yoga, activities that would add to the decorations of the ceremony space, a big lunch in two locations. Everything went beautifully.
While they were doing that, our family was finishing up putting the dinner together. I drove into DC to pick up the fancy hummus and tahini and sauces from the basement production area that the hip chef uses. Jon and Becca made dressings and put the salads together. Alissa made pies in sheet pans. Becca came with me to the restaurant to buy the Persian rice -- even that was an adventure -- and together we decided that we needed to buy 50% more than we had originally ordered. It is so hard to tell how much food you really need, and we all have a fear of running out.
At 4:48, about 12 minutes before people were supposed to assemble and sit quietly, Benjamin and his crew were still putting the finishing touches on the pulley system in the dome. At that same moment, Charles and I were taking the top off the septic tank to figure out why the toilet in the barn was clogged. There were two bakers huddled in the cooler working on frosting the cake.
But at 5:30 we were all in our seats, dressed in clean clothes, listening to the three musicians who were making quiet music with a saw, some spinning hoses and I don't know what else. There were benches for everyone (constructed out of materials on the farm), there were fanciful bird sculptures hanging overhead, and a complicated array of bamboo rings and bouquets dangled from fishing line stretched above. We were mesmerized.
In the end, the ceremony was not nearly as wild and impenetrable as we had been allowed to imagine. There were songs and poems. I had been invited to make a case for marriage to start off the proceedings, and I had found time to write it out at dawn that day, and so I made the case. Even though it was never discussed, I did say a Shechechyanu at the end of my remarks. It seemed entirely appropriate, especially as we seemed to be cherry picking from any number of traditions.
Julia and Stephen spoke about why they had decided to marry each other and about their fears that they would lose that feeling of surprise and unfamiliarity. They greeted each other's families with long and loving messages. They gave each other bamboo rings to link together and hang from the structure and eventually there was a completely magical moment when the 200 rings with little flower bouquets were lowered at once and we each took a ring and linked it to another, demonstrating our connection and our commitment to that grand connection.
The meal was fabulous. The lamb was incredible. The salads were colorful and unusual and delicious. There was twice as much food as we needed, even though once again there were about 40 more people than expected. Some of us sat on picnic blankets and visited while we ate. One guest said she felt so relaxed, not having place cards and needing to make conversation with people she didn't know. But everyone knew someone, it was a huge reunion of families and farm workers and lifelong friends, with lots and lots of toddlers and babies being handed around.
As it got dark and the fireflies exploded in the fields surrounding us, the Denver uncles introduced one more event -- lighting candles and heating up small biodegradable hot air balloons (about the size of a trash bag), and sending them aloft. It was one more unexpected moment of magic, watching 120 glowing lanterns carrying wishes float into the sky.
More speeches, cake, There was dancing into the night.
And the next day it rained from the beginning to the end of the day. Somehow, the weather gods knew that it would be best to take a break from raining for just one day, the longest day of the year.
I actually don't know the whole story because it was impossible to be in every place but everyone was having a similar experience. We all knew the end goal -- to have an event that would engage everyone, would allow everyone to feel that they had contributed, and that we would end up feeling like we had been present at a gathering that could be described as a wedding. We were making memories together for days and days.
Stephen and Julia, individually and also together, had a lot of ideas about what might be worth building or creating or doing. In the end, Stephen said they managed to accomplish about 10% of what he was imagining.
They chose the longest day of the year for spiritual reasons and practical ones too. There was a lot to fit in. And the days leading up to the solstice were also long days, which helped to make things possible. In addition, all the resources of the farm were much more available on the weekdays than they would have been on a weekend day. I admit, I encouraged them to choose that day. It was inconvenient for people with regular jobs but it was good for the rest of us.
They invited friends from around the world to join them for a few weeks of co-loveration and preparation. This meant that there was a group of millenials living and working and eating and talking and singing together for many days. Things naturally got untidy, systems were created to make the camp function smoothly. There were leaders who made charts and organized the meals and activities. People slept in the rustic spaces that were available. There was lots of cooking and cleaning. They had anticipated many of the issues and had assembled an outdoor kitchen. It rained more than normal so there was a lot more puddle and waterfall excitement than they were expecting.
And every day there was work to be done on the various projects. There was the dome that would be built out of long pieces of bamboo. The dome was ambitious in every way -- it needed to encircle the 200 people attending the ceremony. It needed to be erected and stay up. It needed to create a sense of sacred space. Stephen's two uncles (one Newcomb, one Snyder) with engineering skills spent long hours making the joints that would hold together all the poles that had unique diameters. They brought materials with them from Denver. Stephen's best friend from college spent hours with the groom, cutting and measuring the bamboo (that was growing along the Middleton border of the Vienna stand parking lot, planted in 2000). There were late nights as they assembled the dome in the clearing, and one night there was a mutiny after midnight when people just needed to go to bed.
The dance floor needed to be designed and built. Stephen's father and his side of the family spent a long weekend creating a dance floor that will be used again and again, and stored in a neat stack in the meantime.
The wedding clothes for the bride and groom were designed and sewn by his talented aunt who worked through the night on her creations. Because designs are fluid and the couple had lots of opinions, in the end, the groom's pants were never finished and he wore a sarong on his bottom half. But the bride's outfit was beautiful and complete. She looked like a stunning version of something from Aladdin. So did he.
The headdresses were designed and constructed by our neighbors who grow flowers. The crowns were wild and so lyrical, with purple grasses and spent sunflower heads and flowers and grapevines.
Because they have so many friends with so many talents, the possibilities were well beyond most people's imaginations. Two friends came down from New England to teach about and perform the task of killing four lambs (who were raised by a friend of ours), in a respectful and calm and not scary way. They led a workshop on tanning the hides and butchering the lambs.
Another friend left his farm to come and roast those lambs, building a structure for the fire and watching over the cooking for a long, hot day. He also cooked a few vegetarian dishes on the side.
Stephen's mother took responsibility for assembling all the normal infrastructure that is needed at a wedding: chairs, tables, dishes, tent, pitchers, linens, the works. She and her husband also cooked the rehearsal dinner meal which was supposed to be for 70 guests but ended up feeding 100.
Our household took the task of making all the dishes that would complement the roasted lamb at the wedding dinner -- Julia asked for Middle Eastern salads and got some recipes from a hip young chef they have befriended. I organized a vegetable chopping party in the Common House and we diced and sliced pounds and pounds of beets and kohlrabi and cucumbers and cantaloupe.. Jon made hundreds of pieces of falafel. Even he was impressed at how unstressful it was to cook for 200 people when you have a chopping party with 10 happy people.
Alissa baked pies and cakes for the dinners and lunches, using fruit from our freezers and blueberries from the bushes.
The wedding cake was made with organic whole wheat flour grown by Heinz and it was baked by one of Julia's talented friends. Five tiers, frosting was almost purple, they did the traditional last-minute construction in the cooler and carried the 60 pound cake to the table before it melted.
Jim's family had the job of setting up all the tables and making everything look nice under the tent. We hired six cheerful and hard-working PVF employees to keep the dishes moving -- there were lots of dishes to wash late into the night, two nights in a row.
One of Julia's friends took the job of sound man incredibly seriously and researched and purchased all the sound equipment, installed it and managed it. The next day, in the pouring rain, he was out in his full rain suit rolling up all the wires and repacking everything into boxes while everyone else was having brunch.
Miraculously, when it was time to have the rehearsal dinner, everyone was ready. We actually had a rehearsal so that the participants would know where to stand and what to expect. The rehearsal was conducted by another one of Julia's incredibly talented friends -- she knew how to manage everyone with grace and a big voice. It rained hard just as we were assembling under the huge tent, so we had to pause to see whether the lightning was going to move on past.
The best part of the dinner, other than just being together, was the "offerings" after the meal. Some people had been asked to prepare a song or a speech. One of Julia's dear friends from forever had written a song about learning that Julia had met her soulmate, and how she learned about Stephen through Julia's stories, It was a song that we could all listen to again and again if we ever get the chance. So sweet and so well told. The chorus was, "he braided my hair...he took a bunch from here, a bunch from there, and another bunch from over there." It is impossible to describe how our hearts melted.
I didn't attend all the festivities on the solstice but they had a dawn service at 5:45, a special meal, yoga, activities that would add to the decorations of the ceremony space, a big lunch in two locations. Everything went beautifully.
While they were doing that, our family was finishing up putting the dinner together. I drove into DC to pick up the fancy hummus and tahini and sauces from the basement production area that the hip chef uses. Jon and Becca made dressings and put the salads together. Alissa made pies in sheet pans. Becca came with me to the restaurant to buy the Persian rice -- even that was an adventure -- and together we decided that we needed to buy 50% more than we had originally ordered. It is so hard to tell how much food you really need, and we all have a fear of running out.
At 4:48, about 12 minutes before people were supposed to assemble and sit quietly, Benjamin and his crew were still putting the finishing touches on the pulley system in the dome. At that same moment, Charles and I were taking the top off the septic tank to figure out why the toilet in the barn was clogged. There were two bakers huddled in the cooler working on frosting the cake.
But at 5:30 we were all in our seats, dressed in clean clothes, listening to the three musicians who were making quiet music with a saw, some spinning hoses and I don't know what else. There were benches for everyone (constructed out of materials on the farm), there were fanciful bird sculptures hanging overhead, and a complicated array of bamboo rings and bouquets dangled from fishing line stretched above. We were mesmerized.
In the end, the ceremony was not nearly as wild and impenetrable as we had been allowed to imagine. There were songs and poems. I had been invited to make a case for marriage to start off the proceedings, and I had found time to write it out at dawn that day, and so I made the case. Even though it was never discussed, I did say a Shechechyanu at the end of my remarks. It seemed entirely appropriate, especially as we seemed to be cherry picking from any number of traditions.
Julia and Stephen spoke about why they had decided to marry each other and about their fears that they would lose that feeling of surprise and unfamiliarity. They greeted each other's families with long and loving messages. They gave each other bamboo rings to link together and hang from the structure and eventually there was a completely magical moment when the 200 rings with little flower bouquets were lowered at once and we each took a ring and linked it to another, demonstrating our connection and our commitment to that grand connection.
The meal was fabulous. The lamb was incredible. The salads were colorful and unusual and delicious. There was twice as much food as we needed, even though once again there were about 40 more people than expected. Some of us sat on picnic blankets and visited while we ate. One guest said she felt so relaxed, not having place cards and needing to make conversation with people she didn't know. But everyone knew someone, it was a huge reunion of families and farm workers and lifelong friends, with lots and lots of toddlers and babies being handed around.
As it got dark and the fireflies exploded in the fields surrounding us, the Denver uncles introduced one more event -- lighting candles and heating up small biodegradable hot air balloons (about the size of a trash bag), and sending them aloft. It was one more unexpected moment of magic, watching 120 glowing lanterns carrying wishes float into the sky.
More speeches, cake, There was dancing into the night.
And the next day it rained from the beginning to the end of the day. Somehow, the weather gods knew that it would be best to take a break from raining for just one day, the longest day of the year.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Before It All Comes Together
While I am not at all responsible for the big picture of this ambitious and ever-evolving wedding (which they have dubbed a co-loveration because that is how they think), it does of course have an impact on the To Do list that continues to grow.
A week from tomorrow, on the summer solstice, there will be a grand celebration. Our beloved Stephen is marrying his soulmate Julia. They are quite a pair. Each one needs the other to tone down their creative impulses, but that doesn't really work.
I am taking this moment to record what I understand about what is happening right now, and in the near future.
Guests have been arriving for about a week, from around the world. The wedding couple has been organizing sleeping spaces and planning a week of activities so that everyone may participate in the unfolding series of events. There are plans, but the plans can change in a flash.
Last week we all thought there would be a tent in the big field space outside Julia and Stephen's house. This tent would house the wedding dinner and the dancing and a long night of celebrating. But as she walked around the farm, looking at the various spaces in the dusk, she found that she wanted a different venue for the evening party. So now we are back to the area where other celebrations have happened -- most recently last July when Stephen's brother Jesse married Shalini there. It is a good spot. A lovely spot. We save this spot for just this type of a special occasion. It is next to the blueberries, tucked into the middle of the farm, far from all the busy-ness. And very close to the clearing where the ceremony will happen.
No one knows yet what the ceremony will be. But we know it will be long and full of unexpected moments. Up until a few weeks ago, the two of them had not really decided that they would be legally married when the day was over. That seemed like a detail that could be dealt with later. But we convinced them that to assemble 175 of their dearest people and then get married later at a courthouse would be such a let-down for those who had come to join them in co-loveration.
Tomorrow I will go to the Fairfax County Courthouse and do the paperwork to be legally allowed to sign the documents that will make their marriage official. I am not performing the ceremony but I am going to make it real. That was my bargaining chip -- I will do the legwork if you just go get your marriage license. All right then.
At 1:00 tomorrow afternoon Stephen has a date with his dear friend Cory. They are meeting to cut bamboo, 32 long pieces (I think) of bamboo so they can construct the dodecahedron, or whatever it will be. So much of this has been years and years in the making. We planted that bamboo in 2000 and this is what it is for.
My sister Anna and her husband have been acquiring the furniture and furnishings for at least a month. Tables and dishes and chairs and silverware and buckets and linens and pots and pans and traffic cones and signage and on and on. At the end of this event, the married people will own a lot of dishes and chairs, as part of their future together, creating gatherings which will allow for transformation in the attendees, slowly but surely. It is all very vague, but it will really happen. It is already happening.
There are parts of this grand project that I have not even imagined. It will be so interesting to be a guest.
But first we have to make the food. Other people are doing a lot of cooking -- including Casey who will watch over the lambs roasting all day on Thursday. Jon will be the head chef for the wedding dinner. I am assembling ingredients and helpers. Our usual roles. It will be a tense few days around here, starting on Monday all the way to the end of Thursday. Alissa is coming on Monday and will start baking non-stop -- she is in charge of all the desserts that are not the wedding cake. Rebecca can't get here until the end of Wednesday and Benjamin arrives in the middle of Thursday.
In the meantime, there are these farms that have to keep working. That will be fascinating, to see how we co-loverate in the Green Barn, washing vegetables as fast as we can so we can get out of the way of the wedding guests who need a quick shower on Thursday afternoon. I will say more about that later, after it really comes true. Maybe we will make Wednesday be our big picking day next week, just to give ourselves a little room to maneuver.
I just canceled a conference call that was scheduled for next Wednesday evening. My priorities are finally coming into focus. Even if I am the chair of the committee, I would never be able to pay attention. What was I even thinking?
But, at this moment, all is quiet where I am. Jon is away with the girls, there is no one here but me. I need to absorb every magical moment of this calm (I am especially aware of this, as five energetic house guests just left yesterday).
And now you are all prepared for the report that will undoubtedly appear when there is a story to tell.
A week from tomorrow, on the summer solstice, there will be a grand celebration. Our beloved Stephen is marrying his soulmate Julia. They are quite a pair. Each one needs the other to tone down their creative impulses, but that doesn't really work.
I am taking this moment to record what I understand about what is happening right now, and in the near future.
Guests have been arriving for about a week, from around the world. The wedding couple has been organizing sleeping spaces and planning a week of activities so that everyone may participate in the unfolding series of events. There are plans, but the plans can change in a flash.
Last week we all thought there would be a tent in the big field space outside Julia and Stephen's house. This tent would house the wedding dinner and the dancing and a long night of celebrating. But as she walked around the farm, looking at the various spaces in the dusk, she found that she wanted a different venue for the evening party. So now we are back to the area where other celebrations have happened -- most recently last July when Stephen's brother Jesse married Shalini there. It is a good spot. A lovely spot. We save this spot for just this type of a special occasion. It is next to the blueberries, tucked into the middle of the farm, far from all the busy-ness. And very close to the clearing where the ceremony will happen.
No one knows yet what the ceremony will be. But we know it will be long and full of unexpected moments. Up until a few weeks ago, the two of them had not really decided that they would be legally married when the day was over. That seemed like a detail that could be dealt with later. But we convinced them that to assemble 175 of their dearest people and then get married later at a courthouse would be such a let-down for those who had come to join them in co-loveration.
Tomorrow I will go to the Fairfax County Courthouse and do the paperwork to be legally allowed to sign the documents that will make their marriage official. I am not performing the ceremony but I am going to make it real. That was my bargaining chip -- I will do the legwork if you just go get your marriage license. All right then.
At 1:00 tomorrow afternoon Stephen has a date with his dear friend Cory. They are meeting to cut bamboo, 32 long pieces (I think) of bamboo so they can construct the dodecahedron, or whatever it will be. So much of this has been years and years in the making. We planted that bamboo in 2000 and this is what it is for.
My sister Anna and her husband have been acquiring the furniture and furnishings for at least a month. Tables and dishes and chairs and silverware and buckets and linens and pots and pans and traffic cones and signage and on and on. At the end of this event, the married people will own a lot of dishes and chairs, as part of their future together, creating gatherings which will allow for transformation in the attendees, slowly but surely. It is all very vague, but it will really happen. It is already happening.
There are parts of this grand project that I have not even imagined. It will be so interesting to be a guest.
But first we have to make the food. Other people are doing a lot of cooking -- including Casey who will watch over the lambs roasting all day on Thursday. Jon will be the head chef for the wedding dinner. I am assembling ingredients and helpers. Our usual roles. It will be a tense few days around here, starting on Monday all the way to the end of Thursday. Alissa is coming on Monday and will start baking non-stop -- she is in charge of all the desserts that are not the wedding cake. Rebecca can't get here until the end of Wednesday and Benjamin arrives in the middle of Thursday.
In the meantime, there are these farms that have to keep working. That will be fascinating, to see how we co-loverate in the Green Barn, washing vegetables as fast as we can so we can get out of the way of the wedding guests who need a quick shower on Thursday afternoon. I will say more about that later, after it really comes true. Maybe we will make Wednesday be our big picking day next week, just to give ourselves a little room to maneuver.
I just canceled a conference call that was scheduled for next Wednesday evening. My priorities are finally coming into focus. Even if I am the chair of the committee, I would never be able to pay attention. What was I even thinking?
But, at this moment, all is quiet where I am. Jon is away with the girls, there is no one here but me. I need to absorb every magical moment of this calm (I am especially aware of this, as five energetic house guests just left yesterday).
And now you are all prepared for the report that will undoubtedly appear when there is a story to tell.
Friday, June 1, 2018
Discovering a New Super Power
Ice cubes make Jon happy. If he doesn't have ice, he thinks about not having ice, and wishing he had ice.
Our first refrigerator in this house made ice, and that was a great thing. Ice all the time, in the freezer. But a few years ago Jon had the chance to scavenge a bigger, fancier fridge from a house that was about to be torn down. This fancy one seemed to be just like the one Auntie Annette has -- with a freezer on one side. And an ice maker with a dispenser on the outside of the door. A dream come true.
Jon decided this abandoned refrigerator was just what we wanted, so he enlisted our nephew to help him wrestle this huge appliance into our kitchen. It was filthy so he spent a few hours washing it out, spreading all the drawers and shelves around the kitchen, which suddenly seemed much smaller.
There was some worry, when he plugged it in after doing all that cleaning, that the motor wouldn't come on. But it did, to his relief. Then there was the problem of fitting the wider, taller refrigerator into the space that was filled by a smaller, perfectly functional one. He put the old fridge out on the porch and spent the next week or so disassembling the countertop, shaving the edge off the cabinet, finding just the quarter inch he needed to wedge this behemoth of a stainless steel appliance into the designated spot.
To his extreme dismay, he discovered that the ice maker did not work. He began his search on the internet for answers, and then parts. If I remember right, some of the parts that arrived were not exactly right. After some more problem-solving, he got the ice maker to work. Hallelujah.
But then, not very long after that, it stopped working. And there was no clear reason for it to quit. Jon was mystified. He started to buy bags of ice to pour into the bin so he could still get ice out of the fancy dispenser on the front. That was okay but not a dream come true. Sometimes he could hear the ice maker grinding and grumbling away, trying to make ice, but failing. He finally turned it off. It was too sad.
Then a few days ago, he says he heard the machine saying that it wanted to work again. So he turned it back on. Nothing happened and he forgot about it. That evening he was on the phone talking to Rebecca and suddenly he heard a miraculous sound: ice cubes dropping into the plastic bucket inside the freezer. It is entirely mysterious but the ice machine came back to life. He has ice, all the time.
There is no point to this story. Jon loves ice and the free refrigerator finally relented and began production for the man who believed it could work. My question is: how did he know it was saying that it wanted to start making ice again? Most of us believe that Jon can fix anything but now he has taken it to a whole new level. Now he speaks refrigerator.
He does have excellent back-up when it comes to equipment and vehicle repairs, and we pay for that but he never asks for help when it comes to indoor challenges. He is not speedy, as his list is long, but eventually he worries a problem into submission and figures it out. After all these years, it is hard for me to imagine a different way to get things fixed. It's not perfect but it is undoubtedly the most cost effective method -- for Jon, a core principle when problem solving is frugality. So this new skill of listening to the secret language of the Kitchen Aid, this is like a super power.
Stay tuned for more exciting episodes. This is at least as interesting as Good Night Moon -- I am trying to imagine how it could become a children's book. Don't stay tuned for that.
Our first refrigerator in this house made ice, and that was a great thing. Ice all the time, in the freezer. But a few years ago Jon had the chance to scavenge a bigger, fancier fridge from a house that was about to be torn down. This fancy one seemed to be just like the one Auntie Annette has -- with a freezer on one side. And an ice maker with a dispenser on the outside of the door. A dream come true.
Jon decided this abandoned refrigerator was just what we wanted, so he enlisted our nephew to help him wrestle this huge appliance into our kitchen. It was filthy so he spent a few hours washing it out, spreading all the drawers and shelves around the kitchen, which suddenly seemed much smaller.
There was some worry, when he plugged it in after doing all that cleaning, that the motor wouldn't come on. But it did, to his relief. Then there was the problem of fitting the wider, taller refrigerator into the space that was filled by a smaller, perfectly functional one. He put the old fridge out on the porch and spent the next week or so disassembling the countertop, shaving the edge off the cabinet, finding just the quarter inch he needed to wedge this behemoth of a stainless steel appliance into the designated spot.
To his extreme dismay, he discovered that the ice maker did not work. He began his search on the internet for answers, and then parts. If I remember right, some of the parts that arrived were not exactly right. After some more problem-solving, he got the ice maker to work. Hallelujah.
But then, not very long after that, it stopped working. And there was no clear reason for it to quit. Jon was mystified. He started to buy bags of ice to pour into the bin so he could still get ice out of the fancy dispenser on the front. That was okay but not a dream come true. Sometimes he could hear the ice maker grinding and grumbling away, trying to make ice, but failing. He finally turned it off. It was too sad.
Then a few days ago, he says he heard the machine saying that it wanted to work again. So he turned it back on. Nothing happened and he forgot about it. That evening he was on the phone talking to Rebecca and suddenly he heard a miraculous sound: ice cubes dropping into the plastic bucket inside the freezer. It is entirely mysterious but the ice machine came back to life. He has ice, all the time.
There is no point to this story. Jon loves ice and the free refrigerator finally relented and began production for the man who believed it could work. My question is: how did he know it was saying that it wanted to start making ice again? Most of us believe that Jon can fix anything but now he has taken it to a whole new level. Now he speaks refrigerator.
He does have excellent back-up when it comes to equipment and vehicle repairs, and we pay for that but he never asks for help when it comes to indoor challenges. He is not speedy, as his list is long, but eventually he worries a problem into submission and figures it out. After all these years, it is hard for me to imagine a different way to get things fixed. It's not perfect but it is undoubtedly the most cost effective method -- for Jon, a core principle when problem solving is frugality. So this new skill of listening to the secret language of the Kitchen Aid, this is like a super power.
Stay tuned for more exciting episodes. This is at least as interesting as Good Night Moon -- I am trying to imagine how it could become a children's book. Don't stay tuned for that.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Thirty Minute Podcast
When my mother and I went to a national sustainable agriculture conference in April, they asked us to make a podcast. We sat at a table across from each other with a big microphone between us, we had a list of questions that we could answer so that we weren't just blithering -- it was something like StoryCorps, but 15 times as long. We had no trouble finding things to talk about.
If you have 30 minutes sometime, you could listen to us complimenting each other on how well we have managed to run our lives and the farm. I notice that we failed to mention that we have husbands. We failed to mention a lot of things but we still talked nonstop, and mostly in complete sentences.
Here's the link:
https://www.sare.org/Newsroom/
If that doesn't work, you can go to www.sare.org and find the podcasts that came out of the conference, Our Farms Our Future. Ours is number 004.
If you have 30 minutes sometime, you could listen to us complimenting each other on how well we have managed to run our lives and the farm. I notice that we failed to mention that we have husbands. We failed to mention a lot of things but we still talked nonstop, and mostly in complete sentences.
Here's the link:
https://www.sare.org/Newsroom/
If that doesn't work, you can go to www.sare.org and find the podcasts that came out of the conference, Our Farms Our Future. Ours is number 004.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Mother's Day
In my family of origin, we do not observe Mother's Day. Our mother never acknowledged the holiday, so we didn't either. But just by chance this year, all of her children had chosen that day to gather and go on a sibling retreat together. It takes us about two years to find a date that we can all agree on -- by now the destination doesn't even matter as much as just finding the time.
As fate would have it, our brother had to change his plans at the last minute. For a few moments, the rest of us thought we would just go to work as usual and try again later to find a new date. But then it dawned on us that we could go without him, and invite our mother instead.
When we got in the car, we knew we were headed for Lancaster County, PA and we had reservations at the Red Caboose Motel. We chose that hokey location because Lani had driven past it many times and had been intrigued. Lani goes up to Lancaster a couple of times a month -- she makes about ten stops in 15 hours, shopping at various businesses to stock her general store with Amish-made goods. She picks up chickens for the store and her flock, she gets 100 "fry pies" at the bakery, she loads up on barrels and sleigh bells. But she never gets to be a tourist.
The Red Caboose Motel is one-of-a-kind. Almost 50 years ago, someone thought it would be cool to make a motel out of a collection of train cars, and so they did. Each room is in its own caboose. They are all lined up around a parking lot/courtyard, parked on some dilapidated rails. It is not shiny and new -- the paint is weathered, the wheels are rusty. But our room was clean and the heater warmed it up quickly.
After a brief nap, we got up and went touring, driving slowly in any random direction we wanted, admiring the fields of tiny corn plants, watching the horse-drawn buggies roll down the two lane roads, noting that the drivers were often children. The area is a mix of Amish farms, Mennonite businesses, agricultural supply stores, tourism. Big fields, long views, lots of cows and horses.
It was Sunday night and cold and rainy so there wasn't a lot going on. We decided to go back to the motel and eat in the train car restaurant. The salad was unremarkable but the crab risotto was yummy. Our waiter was charming and not from around there -- when we said we were excited to see tapioca on the menu he said, "I don't get why anyone likes that." We explained that it was something you had to grow up eating, you would never learn to like it as an adult.
The high point of the evening was the movie, though. At 7:30, the receptionist locked up the office and went outside to the barn so she could turn on the movie. We asked her if it was cold in the barn and she said, "it's not heated." It was a real barn, with horses downstairs and lots of stuff stored on the second level. The horse smell was strong, probably because it was so wet out and probably because they were directly below us. We made our way to the hard-backed chairs and chose our seats (we were the only ones in the audience until another family came in a few minutes after us). We settled in to watch "Up." Mom was the only one who had never seen it before, but we all loved it. Halfway through the movie it started to rain really hard, so we were in a cocoon of noise, under a metal roof, thunder outside.
When we went to bed (at about 9:30) the storm was still pounding and flashing outside. When the lightning and thunder happened at just about the same moment, Anna's feet came over the edge of the top bunk and she abandoned her post by the ceiling, climbing into Lani's double bed for the night.
On Monday morning, as Lani had promised, we saw that it was Wash Day. Clotheslines with pulleys on the ends, filled with plain colored, plain made Amish clothes, way up high, the line attached to the barn on one end and the house on the other. The clothes were sorted by type and color, with all the black pants together, all the dresses together, the linens next to each other.
Our first destination was a restaurant supply store. We were just going to see what was there so we could send Lani back later to pick up an order for us. But we wandered through the aisles for a long time, maybe for hours, and filled up a shopping cart with all sorts of useful items. We shopped for the wedding, for the Common House, the general store, our own kitchens. Later we spread it all out on a picnic table and sorted out the receipt (and found two mistakes that required us to go back and get a refund from the nice cashier...no problem).
That's basically how we spent the day, shopping at stores that do not exist near us.
That was about the most memorable Mother's Day we can remember, even though we weren't technically observing the day. We just got to spend 30 hours with our mother. Now that we have Google at our fingertips, we can get lots of questions answered as we drive around and see things we don't understand -- Lani even figured out why there were dozens of cars parked along a highway, waiting for an event. It was the 29th annual Make A Wish Mother's Day Parade, with kids riding in fire trucks. There was no end to the excitement in Lancaster County.
Lani wanted to spend one more night because the next movie was "Finding Dory." Anna wants to go back and stay in some cabins that look like Tiny Houses in a campground near an antique mill.
We headed home in the afternoon and by the time we were almost back to Loudoun, there was a severe storm warning (our phones were blaring alarms) right in that region so we dumped Lani out and drove home as fast as we could. We listened to the radio and heard that conditions were just right for a tornado (so we texted everyone at the farm and told them to take cover). We stayed ahead of the hail and the winds and scooted into our houses in time to watch the storm hit. There was no serious damage, although there were tornadoes reported to the west and south of the Loudoun farm.
Our only regret is that it was too wet for the horse teams to work in the fields, so we didn't get to see farmers driving eight horses, plowing. We will have to go back -- our work as tourists is not yet done.
As fate would have it, our brother had to change his plans at the last minute. For a few moments, the rest of us thought we would just go to work as usual and try again later to find a new date. But then it dawned on us that we could go without him, and invite our mother instead.
When we got in the car, we knew we were headed for Lancaster County, PA and we had reservations at the Red Caboose Motel. We chose that hokey location because Lani had driven past it many times and had been intrigued. Lani goes up to Lancaster a couple of times a month -- she makes about ten stops in 15 hours, shopping at various businesses to stock her general store with Amish-made goods. She picks up chickens for the store and her flock, she gets 100 "fry pies" at the bakery, she loads up on barrels and sleigh bells. But she never gets to be a tourist.
The Red Caboose Motel is one-of-a-kind. Almost 50 years ago, someone thought it would be cool to make a motel out of a collection of train cars, and so they did. Each room is in its own caboose. They are all lined up around a parking lot/courtyard, parked on some dilapidated rails. It is not shiny and new -- the paint is weathered, the wheels are rusty. But our room was clean and the heater warmed it up quickly.
After a brief nap, we got up and went touring, driving slowly in any random direction we wanted, admiring the fields of tiny corn plants, watching the horse-drawn buggies roll down the two lane roads, noting that the drivers were often children. The area is a mix of Amish farms, Mennonite businesses, agricultural supply stores, tourism. Big fields, long views, lots of cows and horses.
It was Sunday night and cold and rainy so there wasn't a lot going on. We decided to go back to the motel and eat in the train car restaurant. The salad was unremarkable but the crab risotto was yummy. Our waiter was charming and not from around there -- when we said we were excited to see tapioca on the menu he said, "I don't get why anyone likes that." We explained that it was something you had to grow up eating, you would never learn to like it as an adult.
The high point of the evening was the movie, though. At 7:30, the receptionist locked up the office and went outside to the barn so she could turn on the movie. We asked her if it was cold in the barn and she said, "it's not heated." It was a real barn, with horses downstairs and lots of stuff stored on the second level. The horse smell was strong, probably because it was so wet out and probably because they were directly below us. We made our way to the hard-backed chairs and chose our seats (we were the only ones in the audience until another family came in a few minutes after us). We settled in to watch "Up." Mom was the only one who had never seen it before, but we all loved it. Halfway through the movie it started to rain really hard, so we were in a cocoon of noise, under a metal roof, thunder outside.
When we went to bed (at about 9:30) the storm was still pounding and flashing outside. When the lightning and thunder happened at just about the same moment, Anna's feet came over the edge of the top bunk and she abandoned her post by the ceiling, climbing into Lani's double bed for the night.
On Monday morning, as Lani had promised, we saw that it was Wash Day. Clotheslines with pulleys on the ends, filled with plain colored, plain made Amish clothes, way up high, the line attached to the barn on one end and the house on the other. The clothes were sorted by type and color, with all the black pants together, all the dresses together, the linens next to each other.
Our first destination was a restaurant supply store. We were just going to see what was there so we could send Lani back later to pick up an order for us. But we wandered through the aisles for a long time, maybe for hours, and filled up a shopping cart with all sorts of useful items. We shopped for the wedding, for the Common House, the general store, our own kitchens. Later we spread it all out on a picnic table and sorted out the receipt (and found two mistakes that required us to go back and get a refund from the nice cashier...no problem).
That's basically how we spent the day, shopping at stores that do not exist near us.
That was about the most memorable Mother's Day we can remember, even though we weren't technically observing the day. We just got to spend 30 hours with our mother. Now that we have Google at our fingertips, we can get lots of questions answered as we drive around and see things we don't understand -- Lani even figured out why there were dozens of cars parked along a highway, waiting for an event. It was the 29th annual Make A Wish Mother's Day Parade, with kids riding in fire trucks. There was no end to the excitement in Lancaster County.
Lani wanted to spend one more night because the next movie was "Finding Dory." Anna wants to go back and stay in some cabins that look like Tiny Houses in a campground near an antique mill.
We headed home in the afternoon and by the time we were almost back to Loudoun, there was a severe storm warning (our phones were blaring alarms) right in that region so we dumped Lani out and drove home as fast as we could. We listened to the radio and heard that conditions were just right for a tornado (so we texted everyone at the farm and told them to take cover). We stayed ahead of the hail and the winds and scooted into our houses in time to watch the storm hit. There was no serious damage, although there were tornadoes reported to the west and south of the Loudoun farm.
Our only regret is that it was too wet for the horse teams to work in the fields, so we didn't get to see farmers driving eight horses, plowing. We will have to go back -- our work as tourists is not yet done.
Monday, May 7, 2018
Small Thoughts While Weeding
I was already an adult by the time I ever tasted a parsnip. This seems funny, now that I think about it, since I have been surrounded by vegetables, including many relatively unknown types, for my whole life. Lilah cooked and served the first parsnip I ever ate, and it was so delicious I became obsessed.
So why are they so rare, in my experience? For one thing, you need to plant parsnips in March around here. Well, conditions might be appropriate for planting a small seed in the ground in March on about two individual days, and you never really know when those days might happen. The soil has to be just warm and dry enough and it has to be ruffled enough to welcome and host a very slow-growing seed.
Let's say you do find a day that works. This year that day was March 29 here on our farm. Of course, we couldn't get the G started on that one magical day (the G is the little 1950s tractor that we use to mark the rows so we can later cultivate using the same tractor...cultivating is taking weeds out mechanically by driving down the rows with little shovels that tear out the weeds between the rows). This has happened before, of course, and Carrie and I are not too proud since we are not the mechanics in the group -- so we hooked up a tractor with a chain and towed the G down the bed, marking the rows. We looked so ridiculous that people took pictures as we drove past them in the field.
Once the rows were marked, Carrie used a walk-behind push seeder to plant the parsnips. Then we had to cover them by hand because the soil wasn't quite as good as it had appeared at first. It didn't really flow. Too wet. Luckily parsnips like wet soil and apparently they want to be wet for their entire growing time.
On April 29, the first tiny plants appeared. Most seedlings of other plants pop up between 3 and 10 days after planting. 30 days is a really long wait. You begin to wonder if the seeds were actually viable. Of course, weed seeds are always viable so there were plenty of weeds covering the bed. It was too early to try to cultivate because the parsnips were way too tiny to see, so first I hoed the edges of the bed just to give Carrie a prayer when she got going with the cultivator.
A week later, the parsnips are still germinating. We have hoed the whole bed once by hand. But it takes about SIX MONTHS for parsnips to get to full size. And right now their leaves look almost identical to a kind of ground cover that only grows in that field (I suspect my Grandma Newcomb planted that ground cover in her yard 75 years ago because that is one of the few places I have ever seen that type of plant.) so that makes weeding a job for only the most experienced weeders.
And this is precisely why I had never eaten a parsnip before. It is almost impossible to think of a price for parsnips that people would be willing to pay and that would even begin to cover the costs. I only know of one farm that has ever sold parsnips at the market -- and that farm is managed by two former managers of our own farm. So I ask them when I want parsnip guidance. It's a very long, slow learning process. You only get to try the experiment once a year, basically.
I used to think carrots were the high bar but now I know there is a much higher bar. Parsnips make carrots look really easy.
Lilah served carrots and parsnips, grated together and sauteed in butter. It was divine, and now I know it was also incredibly special. Where did she get those parsnips?
So why are they so rare, in my experience? For one thing, you need to plant parsnips in March around here. Well, conditions might be appropriate for planting a small seed in the ground in March on about two individual days, and you never really know when those days might happen. The soil has to be just warm and dry enough and it has to be ruffled enough to welcome and host a very slow-growing seed.
Let's say you do find a day that works. This year that day was March 29 here on our farm. Of course, we couldn't get the G started on that one magical day (the G is the little 1950s tractor that we use to mark the rows so we can later cultivate using the same tractor...cultivating is taking weeds out mechanically by driving down the rows with little shovels that tear out the weeds between the rows). This has happened before, of course, and Carrie and I are not too proud since we are not the mechanics in the group -- so we hooked up a tractor with a chain and towed the G down the bed, marking the rows. We looked so ridiculous that people took pictures as we drove past them in the field.
Once the rows were marked, Carrie used a walk-behind push seeder to plant the parsnips. Then we had to cover them by hand because the soil wasn't quite as good as it had appeared at first. It didn't really flow. Too wet. Luckily parsnips like wet soil and apparently they want to be wet for their entire growing time.
On April 29, the first tiny plants appeared. Most seedlings of other plants pop up between 3 and 10 days after planting. 30 days is a really long wait. You begin to wonder if the seeds were actually viable. Of course, weed seeds are always viable so there were plenty of weeds covering the bed. It was too early to try to cultivate because the parsnips were way too tiny to see, so first I hoed the edges of the bed just to give Carrie a prayer when she got going with the cultivator.
A week later, the parsnips are still germinating. We have hoed the whole bed once by hand. But it takes about SIX MONTHS for parsnips to get to full size. And right now their leaves look almost identical to a kind of ground cover that only grows in that field (I suspect my Grandma Newcomb planted that ground cover in her yard 75 years ago because that is one of the few places I have ever seen that type of plant.) so that makes weeding a job for only the most experienced weeders.
And this is precisely why I had never eaten a parsnip before. It is almost impossible to think of a price for parsnips that people would be willing to pay and that would even begin to cover the costs. I only know of one farm that has ever sold parsnips at the market -- and that farm is managed by two former managers of our own farm. So I ask them when I want parsnip guidance. It's a very long, slow learning process. You only get to try the experiment once a year, basically.
I used to think carrots were the high bar but now I know there is a much higher bar. Parsnips make carrots look really easy.
Lilah served carrots and parsnips, grated together and sauteed in butter. It was divine, and now I know it was also incredibly special. Where did she get those parsnips?
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Loose Ends
When he was at Oberlin, my brother Charles was elected Loose Ends Coordinator at his food co-op. This was the politically acceptable title for President at the time. The title does not really convey all the things that a President does, but it brings it down to a level that makes everyone feel cozy about a lack of hierarchy.
So, speaking as the LEC here, I am going to circle back and wrap up some of the stories that were left unfinished in recent postcards. Six weeks after my self-pitying description of projects that were haunting me, I can report that all have been resolved. The turmeric arrived, without an apology but in good condition. The taxes are done. The herbs took about 10 phone calls and that many more emails, but we got all that we needed from greenhouses as far away as North Carolina. And, just when I was giving up hope, I finally got the call from Kenny Baker the trucker.
Usually the lime truck needs to come when the ground is still frozen so it won't get stuck. The truck probably weighs 12 tons empty and then there is the lime. You can't spread when it's windy. You can't spread when it's wet. By the time I had finally connected with the right Baker truck driver, the ground was already thawed, so we had to wait for all the conditions to line up. This has been one wild and windy spring without three warm days in a row.
We couldn't wait forever so we started planting some fields without spreading lime. I called Kenny Baker now and then, just to remind him to keep me in mind. Finally, finally on Friday afternoon last week he called and said he would be here the following morning. The winds would be calm.
Luckily I already had a plan to be out in Loudoun so that was good. By the time he arrived at 10:15, four of us had already mulched most of the potato patch and I was ready to be rescued from that job. I climbed into the huge, dusty truck and pushed all the inevitable detritus off the passenger seat. Kenny Baker looked like he could be anywhere between 80 and 100 years old, wiry and wrinkled. I think he was surprised to see what I looked like too. I introduced myself and we headed off to spread some lime.
It would have been better if he had known before we started just how many fields we were spreading and how big they were. He couldn't see into the back of the truck to know much lime was left, and we were driving in a giant lime cloud. The whole thing was terribly unscientific. I had ordered 8 tons but he brought almost 14 because he just couldn't let himself bring such a small load. We bounced across field after field, spreading some unknown quantity of lime -- he had set the machine at 1 ton/acre but that is meaningless if you drive too close to your last pass, or too far away. Anyway, he had lots of questions as we blasted the fields -- how much is this place worth? What do you mean you don't know, of course you know. What are you growing here? What did you grow here last year? You must make a lot of money. How much did this cost when you bought it? How many people work here? Where you sell all this stuff? And after I had a brief phone call with Jon about planting carrots, he paused and then said: You're kind of bossy with your husband, aren't you?
By the time we had used up all the lime (in the middle of the very last field that remains unfinished) he knew a lot about this business. And if I call him again next year he will remember who I am and there is a chance that he will put me higher on his list.
Meanwhile, back in Vienna, the ecoterrorism continues. For about a week the groundhogs stayed very quiet. I checked the holes every day and they still were stuffed with sticks and rocks and no one was going in or out. The kohlrabi plants began to grow some new leaves. But then a few days ago, the groundhogs resumed the battle. Every morning I find at least one hole has been dug out again and I get some more sticks and rocks and repack the hole. I also add a bucket of garbage, just so I can make the whole area less appealing. Most of the food I dump is pretty uninteresting to those varmints. They push the unwanted vegetables down the hill -- broccoli, onions, citrus peels. So I make sure to retrieve those and stuff them way down into the hole. Today I took it to another level and poured a bucket of fermenting onion plants (fish and seaweed and a lot of rainwater) down the hole. I can be as persistent as any groundhog. And they got that treatment because for the first time in a couple of weeks they went back to the cabbage patch and ate their way down the bed.
See? These are some seriously loose ends that someone needs to watch over. Everyone else is too busy to check groundhog holes every day. I asked Jon if he would ride around in the lime truck and he said that was my job. In a half an hour some lady is going to call me about "collaborating" about something -- she is a chef who just got an award for her work on the intersection between climate change and agriculture. I have no idea what that means, but I will ask her. And I have to drop a truck off and pick up the one that just got inspected, while we talk on the phone.
There is no end to the excitement around here. If the sun ever comes out and we get past 65 degrees, we will be exploding with activity. Gotta get all those dangling loose ends tied up before that. Making great progress...
So, speaking as the LEC here, I am going to circle back and wrap up some of the stories that were left unfinished in recent postcards. Six weeks after my self-pitying description of projects that were haunting me, I can report that all have been resolved. The turmeric arrived, without an apology but in good condition. The taxes are done. The herbs took about 10 phone calls and that many more emails, but we got all that we needed from greenhouses as far away as North Carolina. And, just when I was giving up hope, I finally got the call from Kenny Baker the trucker.
Usually the lime truck needs to come when the ground is still frozen so it won't get stuck. The truck probably weighs 12 tons empty and then there is the lime. You can't spread when it's windy. You can't spread when it's wet. By the time I had finally connected with the right Baker truck driver, the ground was already thawed, so we had to wait for all the conditions to line up. This has been one wild and windy spring without three warm days in a row.
We couldn't wait forever so we started planting some fields without spreading lime. I called Kenny Baker now and then, just to remind him to keep me in mind. Finally, finally on Friday afternoon last week he called and said he would be here the following morning. The winds would be calm.
Luckily I already had a plan to be out in Loudoun so that was good. By the time he arrived at 10:15, four of us had already mulched most of the potato patch and I was ready to be rescued from that job. I climbed into the huge, dusty truck and pushed all the inevitable detritus off the passenger seat. Kenny Baker looked like he could be anywhere between 80 and 100 years old, wiry and wrinkled. I think he was surprised to see what I looked like too. I introduced myself and we headed off to spread some lime.
It would have been better if he had known before we started just how many fields we were spreading and how big they were. He couldn't see into the back of the truck to know much lime was left, and we were driving in a giant lime cloud. The whole thing was terribly unscientific. I had ordered 8 tons but he brought almost 14 because he just couldn't let himself bring such a small load. We bounced across field after field, spreading some unknown quantity of lime -- he had set the machine at 1 ton/acre but that is meaningless if you drive too close to your last pass, or too far away. Anyway, he had lots of questions as we blasted the fields -- how much is this place worth? What do you mean you don't know, of course you know. What are you growing here? What did you grow here last year? You must make a lot of money. How much did this cost when you bought it? How many people work here? Where you sell all this stuff? And after I had a brief phone call with Jon about planting carrots, he paused and then said: You're kind of bossy with your husband, aren't you?
By the time we had used up all the lime (in the middle of the very last field that remains unfinished) he knew a lot about this business. And if I call him again next year he will remember who I am and there is a chance that he will put me higher on his list.
Meanwhile, back in Vienna, the ecoterrorism continues. For about a week the groundhogs stayed very quiet. I checked the holes every day and they still were stuffed with sticks and rocks and no one was going in or out. The kohlrabi plants began to grow some new leaves. But then a few days ago, the groundhogs resumed the battle. Every morning I find at least one hole has been dug out again and I get some more sticks and rocks and repack the hole. I also add a bucket of garbage, just so I can make the whole area less appealing. Most of the food I dump is pretty uninteresting to those varmints. They push the unwanted vegetables down the hill -- broccoli, onions, citrus peels. So I make sure to retrieve those and stuff them way down into the hole. Today I took it to another level and poured a bucket of fermenting onion plants (fish and seaweed and a lot of rainwater) down the hole. I can be as persistent as any groundhog. And they got that treatment because for the first time in a couple of weeks they went back to the cabbage patch and ate their way down the bed.
See? These are some seriously loose ends that someone needs to watch over. Everyone else is too busy to check groundhog holes every day. I asked Jon if he would ride around in the lime truck and he said that was my job. In a half an hour some lady is going to call me about "collaborating" about something -- she is a chef who just got an award for her work on the intersection between climate change and agriculture. I have no idea what that means, but I will ask her. And I have to drop a truck off and pick up the one that just got inspected, while we talk on the phone.
There is no end to the excitement around here. If the sun ever comes out and we get past 65 degrees, we will be exploding with activity. Gotta get all those dangling loose ends tied up before that. Making great progress...
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